YOUR  UNITED  STATES 


THE    GLORY    OF    FIFTH    AVENUE    INSPIRES    EVEN 


[See  page  28 
THOSE    ON    FOOT 


YOUR 
UNITED  STATES 

IMPRESSIONS  OF  A  FIRST  VISIT 


BY 

ARNOLD    BENNETT 


ILLUSTRATED    BY 

FRANK    CRAIG 


HARPER   &   BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK   AND    LONDON 

M  CM  XII 


COPYRIGHT.    1912.    BY    HARPER   &    BROTHERS 

PRINTED   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES   OF   AMERICA 

PUBLISHED   OCTOBER.    1912 


A-N 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  THE  FIRST  NIGHT 3 

II.  STREETS 27 

III.  THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER  SITES 49 

IV.  SOME  ORGANIZATIONS 73 

V.  TRANSIT  AND  HOTELS 99 

VI.  SPORT  AND  THE  THEATER 123 

VII.  EDUCATION  AND  ART 147 

VIII.  CITIZENS 171 


254395 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE  GLORY  OF  FIFTH  AVENUE  INSPIRES  EVEN  THOSE  ON  FOOT  Frontispiece 

DISEMBARKING  AT  NEW  YORK Facing  p.  IO 

THE  DOWN-TOWN  BROADWAY  OF  CROWDED  SKY-SCRAPERS  .  "  1 6 

BROADWAY  ON  ELECTION  NIGHT "  2O 

A  BUSY  DAY  ON  THE  CURB  MARKET 34 

A  WELL-KNOWN  WALL  STREET  CHARACTER 36 

THE  SKY-SCRAPERS  OF  LOWER  NEW  YORK  AT  NIGHT  ...  38 

A  WINTER  MORNING  IN  LINCOLN  PARK,  CHICAGO  ....  42 

A  RIVER-FRONT  HARMONY  IN  BLACK  AND  WHITE — CHICAGO  .  "  44 

THE  APPROACH  TO  THE  CAPITOL 50 

ON  PENNSYLVANIA  AVENUE 52 

ON  THE  STEPS  OF  THE  PORTICO — THE  CAPITOL 54 

UNDER  THE  GREAT  DOME  OF  THE  CAPITOL "  56 

THE  PROMENADE — CITY  POINT,  BOSTON 60 

THE  BOSTON  YACHT  CLUB — OVERLOOKING  THE  HARBOR  .  .  64 

AT  MORN  POURING  CONFIDENCES  INTO  HER  TELEPHONE  .  74 

LUNCHEON  IN  A  DOWN-TOWN  CLUB "  86 

A  YOUNG  WOMAN  WAS  JUST  FINISHING  A  FLORID  SONG  .  .  "  QO 

ABSORBED  IN  THAT  WONDROUS  SATISFYING  HOBBY  ....  "  94 

IN  THE  PARLOR-CAR "  IOO 

BREAKFAST  EN  ROUTE "  IO8 

IN  THE  SUBWAY  ONE  ENCOUNTERS  AN  INSISTENT,  HURRYING 

STREAM "  112 

THE  STRAP-HANGERS "  1 14 

THE  PASSENGERS  ON  THE  ELEVATED  AT  NIGHT  ARE  ODDLY 

ASSORTED                                                                                      ....  "         Il6 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE   RESTAURANT   OF   A   GREAT   HOTEL   IS   BUT   ONE   FEATURE 

OF  ITS  SPLENDOR Facing  p.  Ii8 

THE  HORSE-SHOWS  ARE  WONDROUS  DISPLAYS  OF  FASHION  .  "  124 
THE  SENSE  OF  A  MIGHTY  AND  CULMINATING  EVENT  SHARPENED 

THE  AIR "  130 

THE  VICTORS  LEAVING  THE  FIELD "  134 

UNIVERSITY  BUILDINGS — UNIVERSITY  OF.  PENNSYLVANIA  .  .  "  156 
MITCHELL  TOWER  AND  HUTCHINSON  COMMONS — UNIVERSITY 

OF  CHICAGO "  164 

PART  OF  THE  DAILY  ROUND  OF  THE  INDOMITABLE  NEW  YORK 

WOMAN "  172 

THE  ASTOUNDING  POPULOUSNESS  OF  THE  EAST  SIDE  ...  "  1 86 


I 

THE    FIRST    NIGHT 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 


THE    FIRST   NIGHT 

I  SAT  with  a  melting  ice  on  my  plate,  and  my  gaze 
on  a  very  distant  swinging  door,  through  which  came 
and  went  every  figure  except  the  familiar  figure  I  de 
sired.  The  figure  of  a  woman  came.  She  wore  a  pale- 
blue  dress  and  a  white  apron  and  cap,  and  carried  a 
dish  in  uplifted  hands,  with  fhe  gesture  of  an  acolyte. 
On  the  bib  of  the  apron  were  two  red  marks,  and  as  she 
approached,  tripping,  scornful,  unheeding,  along  the 
interminable  carpeted  aisle,  between  serried  tables  of 
correct  diners,  the  vague  blur  of  her  face  gradually  de 
veloped  into  features,  and  the  two  red  marks  on  her 
stomacher  grew  into  two  rampant  lions,  each  holding  a  < 
globe  in  its  ferocious  paws;  and  she  passed  on,  bearing 
away  the  dish  and  these  mysterious  symbols,  and  lessened 
into  a  puppet  on  the  horizon  of  the  enormous  hall,  and 
finally  vanished  through  another  door.  She  was  suc 
ceeded  by  men,  all  bearing  dishes,  but  none  of  them  so 
inexorably  scornful  as  she,  and  none  of  them  disappear 
ing  where  she  had  disappeared;  every  man  relented 
and  stopped  at  some  table  or  other.  But  the  figure  I 

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YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

desired  remained  invisible,  and  my  ice  continued  to 
melt,  in  accordance  with  chemical  law.  The  orchestra 
in  the  gallery  leaped  suddenly  into  the  rag-time  without 
whose  accompaniment  it  was  impossible,  anywhere  in 
the  civilized  world,  to  dine  correctly.  That  rag-time, 
committed,  I  suppose,  originally  by  some  well-inten 
tioned  if  banal  composer  in  the  privacy  of  his  study  one 
night,  had  spread  over  the  whole  universe  of  restaurants 
like  a  pest,  to  the  exasperation  of  the  sensitive,  but 
evidently  to  the  joy  of  correct  diners.  Joy  shone  in  the 
elated  eyes  of  the  four  hundred  persons  correctly  dining 
together  in  this  high  refectory,  and  at  the  end  there  was 
honest  applause!  .  .  .  And  yet  you  never  encountered  a 
person  who,  questioned  singly,  did  not  agree  and  even 
assert  of  his  own  accord  that  music  at  meals  is  an  out 
rageous  nuisance!  .  .  . 

However,  my  desired  figure  was  at  length  manifest. 
The  man  came  hurrying  and  a  little  breathless,  with  his 
salver,  at  once  apologetic  and  triumphant.  My  ice 
was  half  liquid.  Had  I  not  the  right  to  reproach  him, 
in  the  withering,  contemptuous  tone  which  correct 
diners  have  learned  to  adopt  toward  the  alien  serfs  who 
attend  them?  I  had  not.  I  had  neither  the  right  nor 
the  courage  nor  the  wish.  This  man  was  as  Anglo- 
Saxon  as  myself.  He  had,  with  all  his  deference,  the 
mien  of  the  race.  When  he  dreamed  of  paradise,  he 
probably  did  not  dream  of  the  caisse  of  a  cosmopolitan 
Grand  Hotel  in  Switzerland.  When  he  spoke  English 
he  was  not  speaking  a  foreign  language.  And  this 
restaurant  was  one  of  the  extremely  few  fashionable 
Anglo-Saxon  restaurants  left  in  the  world,  where  an 

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THE    FIRST   NIGHT 

order  given  in  English  is  understood  at  the  first  try, 
and  where  the  English  language  is  not  assassinated  and 
dismembered  by  menials  who  despise  it,  menials  who 
slang  one  another  openly  in  the  patois  of  Geneva, 
Luxembourg,  or  Naples.  A  singular  survival,  this 
restaurant!  .  .  .  Moreover,  the  man  was  justified  in  his 
triumphant  air.  Not  only  had  he  most  intelligently 
brought  me  a  fresh  ice,  but  he  had  brought  the  particular 
kind  of  rusk  for  which  I  had  asked.  There  were  over 
thirty  dishes  on  the  emblazoned  menu,  and  of  course  I 
had  wanted  something  that  was  not  on  it:  a  peculiar 
rusk,  a  rusk  recondite  and  unheard  of  by  my  fellow- 
diners.  The  man  had  hopefully  said  that  he  "would 
see."  And  here  lay  the  rusk,  magically  obtained.  I 
felicitated  him,  as  an  equal.  And  then,  having  consumed 
the  ice  and  the  fruits  of  the  hot-house,  I  arose  and 
followed  in  the  path  of  the  lion-breasted  woman,  and 
arrived  at  an  elevator,  and  was  wafted  aloft  by  a  boy  of 
sixteen  who  did  nothing  else  from  6  A.M.  till  midnight 
(so  he  said)  but  ascend  and  descend  in  that  elevator. 
By  the  discipline  of  this  inspiring  and  jocund  task  he 
was  being  prepared  for  manhood  and  the  greater  world! 
. . .  And  yet,  what  would  you?  Elevators  must  have  boys, 
and  even  men.  Civilization  is  not  so  simple  as  it  may 
seem  to  the  passionate  reformer  and  lover  of  humanity. 
Later,  in  the  vast  lounge  above  the  restaurant,  I 
formed  one  of  a  group  of  men,  most  of  whom  had  ac 
quired  fame,  and  had  the  slight  agreeable  self-conscious 
ness  that  fame  gives;  and  I  listened,  against  a  back 
ground  of  the  ever-insistent  music,  to  one  of  those  end 
less  and  multifarious  reminiscent  conversations  that  are 

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YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

heard  only  in  such  places.  The  companion  on  my  right 
would  tell  how  he  had  inhabited  a  house  in  Siam,  next 
to  the  temple  in  front  of  which  the  corpses  of  people  too 
poor  to  be  burned  were  laid  out,  after  surgical  prelimina 
ries,  to  be  devoured  by  vultures,  and  how  the  vultures, 
when  gorged,  would  flap  to  the  roof  of  his  house  and  sit 
there  in  contemplation.  And  the  companion  on  my 
left  would  tell  how,  when  he  was  unfamous  and  on  his 
beam-ends,  he  would  stay  in  bed  with  a  sham  attack  of 
influenza,  and  on  the  day  when  a  chance  offered  itself 
would  get  up  and  don  his  only  suit — a  glorious  one — and, 
fitting  an  eye-glass  into  his  eye  because  it  made  him 
look  older,  would  go  forth  to  confront  the  chance.  And 
then  the  talk  might  be  interrupted  in  order  to  consult 
the  morning  paper,  and  so  settle  a  dispute  about  the 
exact  price  of  Union  Pacifies.  And  then  an  Italian 
engineer  would  tell  about  sport  in  the  woods  of  Maine, 
a  perfect  menagerie  of  wild  animals  where  it  was  ad 
visable  to  use  a  revolver  lest  the  excessive  noise  of  a 
fowling-piece  should  disturb  the  entire  forest,  and  how 
once  he  had  shot  seven  times  at  an  imperturbable  par 
tridge  showing  its  head  over  a  tree,  and  missed  seven 
times,  and  how  the  partridge  had  at  last  flown  off,  with 
a  flicker  of  plumage  that  almost  said  aloud,  "Well,  I 
really  can't  wait  any  longer!"  And  then  might  follow 
a  simply  tremendous  discussion  about  the  digestibility 
of  buckwheat-cakes. 

And  then  the  conversation  of  every  group  in  the  lounge 
would  be  stopped  by  the  entry  of  a  page  bearing  a  tele 
gram  and  calling  out  in  the  voice  of  destiny  the  name 
of  him  to  whom  the  telegram  was  addressed.  And  then 

6 


THE    FIRST    NIGHT 

another  companion  would  relate  in  intricate  detail  a 
recent  excursion  into  Yucatan,  speaking  negligently — as 
though  it  were  a  trifle — of  the  extraordinary  beauty  of 
the  women  of  Yucatan,  and  in  the  end  making  quite 
plain  his  conviction  that  no  other  women  were  as  beau 
tiful  as  the  women  of  Yucatan.  And  then  the  inevitable 
Mona  Lisa  would  get  onto  the  carpet,  and  one  heard, 
apropos,  of  the  theft  of  Adam  mantelpieces  from  Russell 
Square,  and  of  superb  masterpieces  of  paint  rotting 
with  damp  in  neglected  Venetian  churches,  and  so  on 
and  so  on,  until  one  had  the  melancholy  illusion  that  the 
whole  art  world  was  going  or  gone  to  destruction.  But 
this  subject  did  not  really  hold  us,  for  the  reason  that, 
beneath  a  blase  exterior,  we  were  all  secretly  preoccupied 
by  the  beauty  of  the  women  of  Yucatan  and  wondering 
whether  we  should  ever  get  to  Yucatan.  .  .  .  And  then, 
looking  by  accident  away,  I  saw  the  dim,  provocative 
faces  of  girls  in  white  jerseys  and  woolen  caps  peering 
from  without  through  the  dark  double  windows  of  the 
lounge.  And  I  was  glad  when  somebody  suggested  that 
it  was  time  to  take  a  turn.  And  outside,  in  the  strong 
wind,  abaft  the  four  funnels  of  the  Lusitania,  a  star 
seemed  to  be  dancing  capriciously  around  and  about  the 
masthead  light.  And  it  was  difficult  to  believe  that  the 
masthead  and  its  light,  and  not  the  star,  were  dancing. 
From  the  lofty  promenade  deck  the  Atlantic  wave  is  a 
little  enough  thing,  so  far  down  beneath  you  that  you 
can  scarcely  even  sniff  its  salty  tang.  But  when  the 
elevator-boy — always  waiting  for  me — had  lowered  me 
through  five  floors,  I  stood  on  tiptoe  and  gazed  through 
the  thick  glass  of  a  porthole  there;  and  the  flying  Atlantic 

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YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

wave,  theatrically  moonlit  now,  was  very  near.  Sud 
denly  something  jumped  up  and  hit  the  glass  of  the  port 
hole  a  fearful,  crashing  blow  that  made  me  draw  away  my 
face  in  alarm ;  and  the  solid  ground  on  which  I  stood  vi 
brated  for  an  instant.  It  was  the  Atlantic  wave,  caress 
ing.  Anybody  on  the  other  side  of  this  thin,  nicely 
painted  steel  plate  (I  thought)  would  be  in  a  rather 
hopeless  situation.  I  turned  away,  half  shivering,  from 
the  menace.  All  was  calm  and  warm  and  reassuring 
within  the  ship.  ...  In  the  withdrawn  privacy  of  my 
berth,  with  the  curtains  closed  over  the  door  and  Murray 
Gilchrist's  new  novel  in  my  hand  and  a  poised  electric 
lamp  over  my  head,  I  looked  about  as  I  lay,  and  every 
thing  was  still  except  a  towel  that  moved  gently,  al 
most  imperceptibly,  to  and  fro.  Yet  the  towel  had  copied 
the  immobility  of  the  star.  It  alone  did  not  oscillate. 
Forty-five  thousand  tons  were  swaying;  but  not  that 
towel.  The  sense  of  actual  present  romance  was  too 
strong  to  let  me  read.  I  extinguished  the  light,  and 
listened  in  the  dark  to  the  faint  straining  noises  of 
the  enormous  organism.  I  thought:  "This  magic  thing 
is  taking  me  there!  In  three  days  I  shall  be  on  that 
shore."  Terrific  adventure !  The  rest  of  the  passengers 
were  merely  going  to  America. 

« 

The  magic  thing  was  much  more  magic  than  I  had 
conceived.  The  next  morning,  being  up  earlier  than 
usual  and  wandering  about  on  strange,  inclosed  decks 
unfamiliar  to  my  feet,  I  beheld  astonishing  unsuspected 
populations  of  men  and  women — crowds  of  them — a 
healthy,  powerful,  prosperous,  independent,  somewhat 


THE    FIRST    NIGHT 

stern  and  disdainful  multitude,  it  seemed  to  me.  Those 
muscular,  striding  girls  in  caps  and  shawls  would  not 
yield  an  inch  to  me  in  their  promenade;  they  brushed 
strongly  and  carelessly  past  me ;  had  I  been  a  ghost  they 
would  have  walked  through  me.  They  were,  and  had 
been,  all  living — eating  and  sleeping — somewhere  within 
the  vessel,  and  I  had  not  imagined  it!  It  is  true  that 
some  ass  in  the  saloon  had  already  calculated  for  my 
benefit  that  there  were  " three  thousand  souls  on  board!" 
(The  solemn  use  of  the  word  "souls"  in  this  connection 
by  a  passenger  should  stamp  a  man  forever.)  But  such 
numerical  statements  do  not  really  arouse  the  imagina 
tion.  I  had  to  see  with  my  eyes.  And  I  did  see  with 
my  eyes.  That  afternoon  a  high  officer  of  the  ship, 
spiriting  me  away  from  the  polite  flirtations  and  pastimes 
of  the  upper  decks,  carried  me  down  to  more  exciting 
scenes.  And  I  saw  a  whole  string  of  young  women 
inoculated  against  smallpox,  under  the  interested  gaze 
of  a  crowd  of  men  ranged  on  a  convenient  staircase. 
And  a  little  later  I  saw  a  whole  string  of  men  inoculated 
against  smallpox,  under  the  interested  gaze  of  a  crowd 
of  young  women  ranged  on  a  convenient  staircase. 

"They're  having  their  sweet  revenge,"  said  the  high 
officer,  indicating  the  young  women.  He  was  an 
epigrammatic  and  terse  speaker.  When  I  reflected 
aloud  upon  the  order  and  discipline  of  service  which  was 
necessary  to  maintain  more  than  a  thousand  roughish 
persons  in  idleness,  cleanliness,  health,  peace,  and  con 
tent,  in  the  inelastic  forward  spaces  of  the  ship,  he 
said  with  a  certain  grimness:  "Everything  has  to  be 
screwed  up  as  tight  as  you  can  screw  it.  And  you  must 

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YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

keep  to  the  round.  What  you  do  to-day  you  must  do 
to-morrow.  But  what  you  don't  do  to-day  you  can't 
get  done  to-morrow." 

Nevertheless,  it  proved  to  be  a  very  human  world, 
a  world  in  which  the  personal  equation  counted.  I  re 
member  that  while  some  four  hundred  in  one  long  hall 
were  applauding  "Home,  Sweet  Home,"  very  badly 
fiddled  by  a  gay  man  on  a  stool  ("Home,  Sweet  Home" 
— and  half  of  them  Scandinavians!),  and  another  four 
hundred  or  so  were  sitting  expectant  on  those  multi 
farious  convenient  staircases  or  wandering  in  and  out 
of  the  maze  of  cubicles  that  contained  fifteen  hundred 
separate  berths,  and  a  third  four  hundred  or  so  in  an 
other  long  hall  were  consuming  a  huge  tea  offered  to 
them  by  a  cohort  of  stewards  in  white — I  remember 
that  while  all  this  was  going  forward  and  the  complex 
mechanism  of  the  kitchen  was  in  full  strain  a  little, 
untidy  woman,  with  an  infant  dragging  at  one  hand  and 
a  mug  in  the  other,  strolled  nonchalantly  into  the  breath 
less  kitchen,  and  said  to  a  hot  cook,  "Please  will  you  give 
me  a  drop  o'  milk  for  this  child?"  And  under  the  mili 
tary  gaze  of  the  high  officer,  too!  Something  awful 
should  have  happened.  The  engines  ought  to  have 
stopped.  The  woman  ought  to  have  been  ordered  out 
to  instant  execution.  The  engines  did  seem  to  falter 
for  a  moment.  But  the  high  officer  grimly  smiled,  and 
they  went  on  again.  "Give  me  yer  mug,  mother,"  said 
the  cook.  And  the  untidy  woman  went  off  with  her  booty. 

"Now  I'll  show  you  the  first-class  kitchens,"  the  high 
officer  said,  and  guided  me  through  uncharted  territories 
to  chambers  where  spits  were  revolving  in  front  of  in- 

10 


DISEMBARKING   AT    NEW   YORK 

t^A-iA  '     f-^v^-f--*--  c^t     '\(--i  rj t\  NT^ 


THE    FIRST   NIGHT 

tense  heat,  and  where  a  confectionery  business  proceeded, 
night  and  day,  and  dough  was  mixed  by  electricity,  and 
potatoes  peeled  by  the  same,  and  where  a  piece  of  clock 
work  lifted  an  egg  out  of  boiling  water  after  it  had  lain 
therein  the  number  of  seconds  prescribed  by  you.  And 
there,  pinned  to  a  board,  was  the  order  I  had  given  for  a 
special  dinner  that  night.  And  there,  too,  more  impres 
sive  even  than  that  order,  was  a  list  of  the  several  hun 
dred  stewards,  together  with  a  designation  of  the  post  of 
each  in  case  of  casualty.  I  noticed  that  thirty  or  forty 
of  them  were  told  off  "to  control  passengers."  After 
all,  we  were  in  the  midst  of  the  Atlantic,  and  in  a  crisis 
the  elevator-boys  themselves  would  have  more  author 
ity  than  any  passenger,  however  gorgeous.  A  thought 
salutary  for  gorgeous  passengers — that  they  were  in  the 
final  resort  mere  fool  bodies  to  be  controlled!  After 
I  had  seen  the  countless  store-rooms,  in  the  recesses  of 
each  of  which  was  hidden  a  clerk  with  a  pen  behind  his 
ear  and  a  nervous  and  taciturn  air,  and  passed  on  to  the 
world  of  the  second  cabin,  which  was  a  surprisingly 
brilliant  imitation  of  the  great  world  of  the  saloon,  I 
found  that  I  held  a  much-diminished  opinion  of  the  great 
world  of  the  saloon,  which  I  now  perceived  to  be  naught 
but  a  thin  crust  or  artificial  gewgaw  stuck  over  the  truly 
thrilling  parts  of  the  ship. 

It  was  not,  however,  till  the  next  day  that  I  realized 
what  the  most  thrilling  part  of  the  ship  was.  Under  the 
protection  of  another  high  officer  I  had  climbed  to  the 
bridge — seventy-five  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea — 
which  bridge  had  been  very  seriously  disestablished  by 
an  ambitious  wave  a  couple  of  years  before — and  had 

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YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

there  inspected  the  devices  for  detecting  and  extinguish 
ing  fires  in  distant  holds  by  merely  turning  a  handle,  and 
the  charts  and  the  telephones  and  the  telegraphs,  and 
the  under-water  signaling,  and  the  sounding-tubes,  and 
the  officers'  piano;  and  I  had  descended  by  way  of  the 
capstan-gear  (which,  being  capable  of  snapping  a  chain 
that  would  hold  two  hundred  and  sixty  tons  in  sus 
pension,  was  suitably  imprisoned  in  a  cage,  like  a  fierce 
wild  animal)  right  through  the  length  of  the  vessel  to  the 
wheel-house  aft.  It  was  comforting  to  know  that  if 
six  alternative  steering-wheels  were  smashed,  one  after 
another,  there  remained  a  seventh  gear  to  be  worked, 
chiefly  by  direct  force  of  human  arm.  And,  after 
descending  several  more  stories,  I  had  seen  the  actual 
steering  —  the  tremendous  affair  moving  to  and  fro, 
majestic  and  apparently  capricious,  in  obedience  to  the 
light  touch  of  a  sailor  six  hundred  feet  distant.  And 
then  I  had  seen  the  four  shafts,  revolving  lazily  one 
hundred  and  eighty-four  to  the  minute;  and  got  myself 
involved  in  dangerous  forests  of  greasy  machinery, 
whizzing  all  deserted  in  a  very  high  temperature  under 
electric  bulbs.  Only  at  rare  intervals  did  I  come  across 
a  man  in  brown  doing  nothing  in  particular — as  often 
as  not  gazing  at  a  dial;  there  were  dials  everywhere, 
showing  pressures  and  speeds.  And  then  I  had  come  to 
the  dynamo-room,  where  the  revolutions  were  twelve 
hundred  to  the  minute,  and  then  to  the  turbines  them 
selves — insignificant  little  things,  with  no  swagger  of 
huge  crank  and  piston,  disappointing  little  things  that 
developed  as  much  as  one-third  of  the  horse-power 
required  for  all  the  electricity  of  New  York. 

12 


THE    FIRST   NIGHT 

And  then,  lastly,  when  I  had  supposed  myself  to  be  at 
the  rock-bottom  of  the  steamer,  I  had  been  instructed 
to  descend  in  earnest,  and  I  went  down  and  down  steel 
ladders,  and  emerged  into  an  enormous,  an  incredible 
cavern,  where  a  hundred  and  ninety  gigantic  furnaces 
were  being  fed  every  ten  minutes  by  hundreds  of  tiny 
black  dolls  called  firemen.  I,  too,  was  a  doll  as  I  looked 
up  at  the  high  white-hot  mouth  of  a  furnace  and  along 
the  endless  vista  of  mouths.  .  .  .  Imagine  hell  with  the 
addition  of  electric  light,  and  you  have  it !  .  .  .  And  up 
stairs,  far  above  on  the  surface  of  the  water,  confec 
tioners  were  making  fancy  cakes,  and  the  elevator- 
boy  was  doing  his  work!  .  .  .  Yes,  the  inferno  was  the 
most  thrilling  part  of  the  ship;  and  no  other  part  of  the 
ship  could  hold  a  candle  to  it.  And  I  remained  of  this 
conviction  even  when  I  sat  in  the  captain's  own  room, 
smoking  his  august  cigars  and  turning  over  his  books. 
I  no  longer  thought,  "  Every  revolution  of  the  pro 
pellers  brings  me  nearer  to  that  shore."  I  thought, 
"Every  shovelful  flung  into  those  white-hot  mouths 

brings  me  nearer." 

• 

It  is  an  absolute  fact  that,  four  hours  before  we  could 
hope  to  disembark,  ladies  in  mantles  and  shore  hats 
(seeming  fantastic  and  enormous  after  the  sobriety  of 
ship  attire),  and  gentlemen  in  shore  hats  and  dark 
overcoats,  were  standing  in  attitudes  of  expectancy  in 
the  saloon-hall,  holding  wraps  and  small  bags:  some 
of  their  faces  had  never  been  seen  till  then  in  the  public 
resorts  of  the  ship.  Excitement  will  indeed  take  strange 
forms.  For  myself,  although  I  was  on  the  threshold 

13 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

of  the  greatest  adventure  of  my  life,  I  was  unaware  of 
being  excited — I  had  not  even  "smelled"  land,  to  say 
nothing  of  having  seen  it — until,  when  it  was  quite  dark, 
I  descried  a  queerly  arranged  group  of  different-colored 
lights  in  the  distance — yellow,  red,  green,  and  what  not. 
My  thoughts  ran  instantly  to  Coney  Island.  I  knew 
that  Coney  was  an  island,  and  that  it  was  a  place  where 
people  had  to  be  attracted  and  distracted  somehow, 
and  I  decided  that  these  illuminations  were  a  device 
of  the  pleasure-mongers  of  Coney.  And  when  the  ship 
began  to  salute  these  illuminations  with  answering  flares 
I  thought  the  captain  was  a  rather  good-natured  man 
to  consent  thus  to  amuse  the  populace.  But  when  we 
slowed,  our  propellers  covering  the  calm  sea  with  acres 
of  foam,  and  the  whole  entire  illuminations  began  to 
approach  us  in  a  body,  I  perceived  that  my  Coney  Island 
was  merely  another  craft,  but  a  very  important  and  of 
ficial  craft.  An  extremely  small  boat  soon  detached 
itself  from  this  pyrotechnical  craft  and  came  with  a 
most  extraordinary  leisureness  toward  a  white  square 
of  light  that  had  somehow  broken  forth  in  the  black 
ness  of  our  side.  And  looking  down  from  the  topmost 
deck,  I  saw,  far  below,  the  tiny  boat  manceuver  on  the 
glinting  wave  into  the  reflection  of  our  electricity  and 
three  mysterious  men  climb  up  from  her  and  disappear 
into  us.  Then  it  was  that  I  grew  really  excited,  un 
comfortably  excited.  The  United  States  had  stretched 
out  a  tentacle. 

In  no  time  at  all,  as  it  seemed,  another  and  more 
formidable  tentacle  had  folded  round  me — in  the  shape 
of  two  interviewers.  (How  these  men  had  got  on  board 


THE    FIRST    NIGHT 

— and  how  my  own  particular  friend  had  got  on  board 
— I  knew  not,  for  we  were  yet  far  from  quay-side.)  I 
had  been  hearing  all  my  life  about  the  sublime  American 
institution  of  the  interview.  I  had  been  warned  by 
Americans  of  its  piquant  dangers.  And  here  I  was  sud 
denly  up  against  it!  Beneath  a  casual  and  jaunty  ex 
terior,  I  trembled.  I  wanted  to  sit,  but  dared  not. 
They  stood;  I  stood.  These  two  men,  however,  were 
adepts.  They  had  the  better  qualities  of  American 
dentists.  Obviously  they  spent  their  lives  in  meeting 
notorieties  on  inbound  steamers,  and  made  naught  of  it. 
They  were  middle-aged,  disillusioned,  tepidly  polite, 
conscientious,  and  rapid.  They  knew  precisely  what 
they  wanted  and  how  to  get  it.  Having  got  it,  they 
raised  their  hats  and  went.  Their  printed  stories  were 
brief,  quite  unpretentious,  and  inoffensive — though  one 
of  them  did  let  out  that  the  most  salient  part  of  me  was 
my  teeth,  and  the  other  did  assert  that  I  behaved 
like  a  school-boy.  (Doubtless  the  result  of  timidity 
trying  to  be  dignified — this  alleged  school-boyishness!) 
I  liked  these  men.  But  they  gave  me  an  incomplete 
idea  of  the  race  of  interviewers  in  the  United  States. 
There  is  a  variety  of  interviewers  very  different  from 
them.  I  am,  I  think,  entitled  to  consider  myself  a  fairly 
first-class  authority  on  all  varieties  of  interviewer,  not 
only  in  New  York  but  in  sundry  other  great  cities.  My 
initiation  was  brief,  but  it  was  thorough.  Many  va 
rieties  won  my  regard  immediately,  and  kept  it;  but 
I  am  conscious  that  my  sympathy  with  one  particular 
brand  (perhaps  not  numerous)  was  at  times  imperfect. 
The  brand  in  question,  as  to  which  I  was  amiably 

15 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

cautioned  before  even  leaving  the  steamer,  is  usually  very 
young,  and  as  often  a  girl  as  a  youth.  He  or  she  cheer 
fully  introduces  himself  or  herself  with  a  hint  that  of 
course  it  is  an  awful  bore  to  be  interviewed,  but  he  or  she 
has  a  job  to  do  and  he  or  she  must  be  allowed  to  do  it. 
Just  so!  But  the  point  which,  in  my  audacity,  I  have 
occasionally  permitted  to  occur  to  me  is  this:  Is  this 
sort  of  interviewer  capable  of  doing  the  job  allotted 
to  him?  I  do  not  mind  slips  of  reporting,  I  do  not  mind 
a  certain  agreeable  malice  (indeed,  I  reckon  to  do  a  bit 
in  that  line  myself).  I  do  not  even  mind  hasty  mis 
representations  (for,  after  all,  we  are  human,  and  the 
millennium  is  still  unannounced) ;  but  I  do  object  to 
inefficiency — especially  in  America,  where  sundry  kinds 
of  efficiency  have  been  carried  farther  than  any  efficiency 
was  ever  carried  before. 

Now  this  sort  of  interviewer  too  often  prefaces  the 
operation  itself  by  the  remark  that  he  really  doesn't 
know  what  question  to  ask  you.  (Too  often  I  have  been 
tempted  to  say :  ''Why  not  ask  me  to  write  the  interview 
for  you?  It  will  save  you  trouble.")  Having  made  this 
remark,  the  interviewer  usually  proceeds  to  give  a 
sketch  of  her  own  career,  together  with  a  conspectus 
of  her  opinions  on  everything,  a  reference  to  her  im 
portance  in  the  interviewing  world,  and  some  glimpse  of 
the  amount  of  her  earnings.  This  achieved,  she  breaks 
off  breathless  and  reproaches  you:  "But,  my  dear  man, 
you  aren't  saying  anything  at  all.  You  really  must 
say  something."  ("My  dear  man"  is  the  favorite 
form  of  address  of  this  sort  of  interviewer  when  she 
happens  to  be  a  girl.)  Too  often  I  have  been  tempted 

16 


-  i-  "i  II 


THE   DOWN-TOWN   BROADWAY   OF   CROWDED   SKY-SCRAPERS 


THE    FIRST   NIGHT 

to  reply:  "Cleopatra,  or  Helen,  which  of  us  is  being  in 
terviewed?"  When  he  has  given  you  a  chance  to  talk, 
this  sort  of  interviewer  listens,  helps,  corrects,  advises, 
but  never  makes  a  note.  The  result  the  next  morning 
is  the  anticipated  result.  The  average  newspaper  reader 
gathers  that  an  extremely  brilliant  young  man  or  woman 
has  held  converse  with  a  very  commonplace  stranger  who, 
being  confused  in  his  or  her  presence,  committed  a  num 
ber  of  absurdities  which  offered  a  strong  and  painful 
contrast  to  the  cleverness  and  wisdom  of  the  brilliant 
youth,  f  This  result  apparently  satisfies  the  average 
newspaper  reader,  but  it  does  not  satisfy  the  expert. 

Immediately  after  my  first  bout  with  interviewers 
I  was  seated  at  a  table  in  the  dining-saloon  of  the  ship 
with  my  particular  friend  and  three  or  four  friendly, 
quiet,  modest,  rather  diffident  human  beings  whom  I 
afterward  discovered  to  be  among  the  best  and  most 
experienced  newspaper  men  in  New  York — not  inter 
viewers. 

Said  one  of  them: 

"Not  every  interviewer  in  New  York  knows  how  to 
write — how  to  put  a  sentence  together  decently.  And 
there  are  perhaps  a  few  who  don't  accurately  know  the 
difference  between  impudence  and  wit." 

A  caustic  remark,  perhaps.  But  I  have  noticed  that 
when  the  variety  of  interviewing  upon  which  I  have 
just  animadverted  becomes  the  topic,  quiet,  reasonable 
Americans  are  apt  to  drop  into  causticity. 

Said   another : 

"I  was  a  reporter  for  twelve  years,  but  I  was  cured  of 
personalities  at  an  early  stage — and  by  a  nigger,  too! 
2  17 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

I  had  been  interviewing  a  nigger  prize-fighter,  and  I'd 
made  some  remarks  about  the  facial  characteristics  of 
niggers  in  general.  Some  other  nigger  wrote  me  a 
long  letter  of  protest,  and  it  ended  like  this:  'I've  never 
seen  you.  But  I've  seen  your  portraits,  and  let  me  re 
spectfully  tell  you  that  you're  no  Lillian  Russell." 

Some  mornings  I,  too,  might  have  sat  down  and  writ 
ten,  from  visual  observation,  "Let  me  respectfully  tell 
you  that  you're  no  Lillian  Russell." 

Said  a  third  among  my  companions: 

"No  importance  whatever  is  attached  to  a  certain 
kind  of  interview  in  the  United  States." 

Which  I  found,  later,  was  quite  true  in  theory,  but  not 
in  practice.  Whenever,  in  that  kind  of  interview,  I  had 
been  made  to  say  something  more  acutely  absurd  and 
maladroit  than  usual,  my  friends  who  watched  over  me, 
and  to  whom  I  owe  so  much  that  cannot  be  written, 
were  a  little  agitated — for  about  half  an  hour;  in  about 
half  an  hour  the  matter  had  somehow  passed  from  their 
minds. 

//"Supposing  I  refuse  to  talk  to  that  sort  of  inter 
viewer?"  I  asked,  at  the  saloon  table. 

"The  interviews  will  appear  all  the  same,"  was  the 
reply. 

My  subsequent  experience  contradicted  this.  On  the 
rare  occasions  when  I  refused  to  be  interviewed,  what 
appeared  was  not  an  interview,  but  .invective. 

Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I  have  been  speaking 
of  only  one  brand  of  American  interviewer.  I  en 
countered  a  couple  of  really  admirable  women  inter 
viewers,  not  too  young,  and  a  confraternity  of  men  who 

18 


THE    FIRST   NIGHT 

did  not  disdain  an  elementary  knowledge  of  their  busi 
ness.  One  of  these  arrived  with  a  written  list  of  ques 
tions,  took  a  shorthand  note  of  all  I  said,  and  then 
brought  me  a  proof  to  correct.  In  interviewing  this 
amounts  almost  to  genius.  ...  I  have  indicated  what  to 
me  seems  a  defect — trifling,  possibly,  but  still  a  defect — 
in  the  brilliant  organization  of  the  great  national  sport 
of  interviewing.  Were  this  defect  removed,  as  it  could 
be,  the  institution  might  be  as  perfect  as  the  American 
oyster.  Than  which  nothing  is  more  perfect. 

% 

"You  aren't  drinking  your  coffee,"  said  some  one, 
inspecting  my  cup  at  the  saloon  table. 

"No,"  I  answered,  firmly;  for  when  the  smooth  ef 
ficiency  of  my  human  machine  is  menaced  I  am  as  faddy 
and  nervous  as  a  marine  engineer  over  lubrication.  ' '  If 
I  did,  I  shouldn't  sleep." 

"And  what  of  it?"  demanded  my  particular  friend, 
challengingly. 

It  was  a  rebuke.  It  was  as  if  he  had  said,  "On  this 
great  night,  when  you  enter  my  wondrous  and  romantic 
country  for  the  first  time,  what  does  it  matter  whether 
you  sleep  or  not?" 

I  saw  the  point.  I  drank  the  coffee.  The  romantic 
sense,  which  had  been  momentarily  driven  back  by  the 
discussion  of  general  ideas,  swept  over  me  again.  ...  In 
fact,  through  the  saloon  windows  could  be  seen  all  the 
Battery  end  of  New  York  and  the  first  vague  visions  of 
sky-scrapers.  .  .  .  Then — the  moments  refused  to  be 
counted — we  were  descending  by  lifts  and  by  gangways 
from  the  high  upper  decks  of  the  ship  down  onto  the 

19 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

rocky  ground  of  the  United  States.  I  don't  think  that 
any  American  ever  set  foot  in  Europe  with  a  more  pro 
found  and  delicious  thrill  than  that  which  affected  me 
at  that  instant.  ...  I  was  there!  .  .  .  The  official  and  un 
official  activities  of  the  quay  passed  before  me  like  a 
dream.  ...  I  heard  my  name  shouted  by  a  man  in  a 
formidably  severe  uniform,  and  I  thought,  "Thus 
early  have  I  somehow  violated  the  Constitution  of  these 
States?"  But  it  was  only  a  telegram  for  me.  .  .  .  And 
then  I  was  in  a  most  rickety  and  confined  taxi,  and  the 
taxi  was  full  to  the  brim  with  luggage,  two  friends,  and 
me.  And  I  was  off  into  New  York. 

At  the  center  of  the  first  cross-roads  I  saw  a  splendid 
and  erect  individual,  flashing  forth  authority,  gaiety, 
and  utter  smartness  in  the  gloom.  Impossible  not  to 
believe  that  he  was  the  owner  of  all  the  adjacent  ground, 
disguised  as  a  cavalry  officer  on  foot. 

"What  is  that  archduke?"  I  inquired. 

"He's  just  a  cop." 

I  knew  then  that  I  was  in  a  great  city. 

The  rest  of  the  ride  was  an  enfevered  phantasmagoria. 
We  burst  startlingly  into  a  very  remarkable  deep  glade 
— on  the  floor  of  it  long  and  violent  surface-cars,  a  few 
open  shops  and  bars  with  commissionaires  at  the  doors, 
vehicles  dipping  and  rising  out  of  holes  in  the  ground, 
vistas  of  forests  of  iron  pillars,  on  the  top  of  which  ran 
deafening,  glittering  trains,  as  on  a  tight-rope;  above 
all  that,  a  layer  of  darkness ;  and  above  the  layer  of  dark 
ness  enormous  moving  images  of  things  in  electricity 
— a  mastodon  kitten  playing  with  a  ball  of  thread,  an 
umbrella  in  a  shower  of  rain,  siphons  of  soda-water 

so 


.     .«*•*»',• 

•./  ;'•:  i  V  .      V/ 


BROADWAY    ON   ELECTION    NIGHT 


THE    FIRST 

being  emptied  and  filled,  gigantic  horses  galloping  at 
full  speed,  and  an  incredible  heraldry  of  chewing-gum. . . . 
Sky-signs!  In  Europe  I  had  always  inveighed  manfully 
against  sky-signs.  But  now  I  bowed  the  head,  van 
quished.  These  sky-signs  annihilated  argument.  More 
over,  had  they  not  been  made  possible  by  the  invention 
of  a  European,  and  that  European  an  intimate  friend 
of  my  own?  .  .  . 

"I  suppose  this  is  Broadway?"  I  ventured. 

It  was.  That  is  to  say,  it  was  one  of  the  Broadways. 
There  are  several  different  ones.  What  could  be  more 
different  from  this  than  the  down-town  Broadway  of 
Trinity  Church  and  the  crowded  sky-scrapers?  And 
even  this  Broadway  could  differ  from  itself,  as  I  knew 
later  on  an  election  night.  ...  I  was  overpowered  by 
Broadway. 

"You  must  not  expect  me  to  talk,"  I  said. 

We  drew  up  in  front  of  a  huge  hotel  and  went  into 
the  bar,  huge  and  gorgeous  to  match,  shimmering  with 
white  bartenders  and  a  variegated  population  of  men- 
about-town.  I  had  never  seen  such  a  bar. 

"Two  Polands  and  a  Scotch  highball,"  was  the  order. 
Of  which  geographical  language  I  understood  not  a 
word. 

"See  the  fresco , ' '  my  particular  friend  suggested .  And 
from  his  tone,  at  once  modestly  content  and  artificially 
careless,  I  knew  that  that  nursery-rhyme  fresco  was  one 
of  the  sights  of  the  pleasure  quarter  of  New  York,  and 
that  I  ought  to  admire  it.  Well,  I  did  admire  it.  I 
found  it  rather  fine  and  apposite.  But  the  free-luncheon 
counter,  as  a  sight,  took  my  fancy  more.  Here  it  was, 

21 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

the  free-luncheon  counter  of  which  the  European  reads 
— generously  loaded,  and  much  freer  than  the  air. 

"Have  something?" 

I  would  not.  They  could  shame  me  into  drinking 
coffee,  but  they  could  not  shame  me  into  eating  corned 
beef  and  granite  biscuits  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night. 
The  Poland  water  sufficed  me. 

We  swept  perilously  off  again  into  the  welter.  That 
same  evening  three  of  my  steamer  companions  were 
thrown  out  of  a  rickety  taxi  into  a  hole  in  the  ground 
in  the  middle  of  New  York,  with  the  result  that  one  of 
them  spent  a  week  in  a  hotel  bed,  under  doctor  and  nurse. 
But  I  went  scatheless.  Such  are  the  hazards  of  life.  .  .  . 
We  arrived  at  a  terminus.  And  it  was  a  great  terminus. 
A  great  terminus  is  an  inhospitable  place.  And  just 
here,  in  the  perfection  of  the  manner  in  which  my 
minutest  comfort  was  studied  and  provided  for,  I  began 
to  appreciate  the  significance  of  American  hospitality — 
that  combination  of  eager  good-nature,  Oriental  lavish- 
ness,  and  sheer  brains.  We  had  time  to  spare.  Close 
to  the  terminus  we  had  passed  by  a  hotel  whose  summit, 
for  all  my  straining  out  of  the  window  of  the  cab,  I  had 
been  unable  to  descry.  I  said  that  I  should  really  like 
to  see  the  top  of  that  hotel.  No  sooner  said  than  done. 
I  saw  the  highest  hotel  I  had  ever  seen.  We  went  into 
the  hotel,  teeming  like  the  other  one,  and  from  an  agree 
able  and  lively  young  dandy  bought  three  cigars  out  of 
millions  of  cigars.  Naught  but  bank-notes  seemed  to 
be  current.  The  European  has  an  awe  of  bank-notes, 
whatever  their  value. 

Then  we  were  in  the  train,  and  the  train  was  moving. 

22 


THE    FIRST    NIGHT 

And  every  few  seconds  it  shot  past  the  end  of  a  long, 
straight,  lighted  thoroughfare — scores  upon  scores  of 
them,  with  a  wider  and  more  brilliant  street  interspersed 
among  them  at  intervals.  And  I  forgot  at  what  hun 
dredth  street  the  train  paused  before  rolling  finally  out 
of  New  York.  I  had  had  the  feeling  of  a  vast  and  metro 
politan  city.  I  thought,  "Whatever  this  is  or  is"  not,  it 
is  a  metropolis,  and  will  rank  with  the  best  of  'em." 
I  had  lived  long  in  more  than  one  metropolis,  and  I 
knew  the  proud  and  the  shameful  unmistakable  marks 
of  the  real  thing.  And  I  was  aware  of  a  poignant  sym 
pathy  with  those  people  and  those  mysterious  genera 
tions  who  had  been  gradually  and  yet  so  rapidly  putting 
together,  girder  by  girder  and  tradition  by  tradition,  all 
unseen  by  me  till  then,  this  illustrious,  proud  organism, 
with  its  nobility  and  its  baseness,  its  rectitude  and  its 
mournful  errors,  its  colossal  sense  of  life.  I  liked  New 
York^irreyocably. 


II 

STREETS 


II 

STREETS 

WHEN  I  first  looked  at  Fifth  Avenue  by  sunlight,  in 
the  tranquillity  of  Sunday  morning,  and  when  I 
last  set  eyes  on  it,  in  the  ordinary  peevish  gloom  of  a  busy 
sailing-day,  I  thought  it  was  the  proudest  thoroughfare 
I  had  ever  seen  anywhere.  The  revisitation  of  certain 
European  capitals  has  forced  me  to  modify  this  judg 
ment;  but  I  still  think  that  Fifth  Avenue,  if  not  un- 
equaled,  is  unsurpassed. 

One  afternoon  I  was  driving  up  Fifth  Avenue  in  the 
company  of  an  architectural  expert  who,  with  the  in 
credible  elastic  good  nature  of  American  business  men, 
had  abandoned  his  affairs  for  half  a  day  in  order  to  go 
with  me  on  a  voyage  of  discovery,  and  he  asked  me,  so  as 
to  get  some  basis  of  understanding  or  disagreement,  what 
building  in  New  York  had  pleased  me  most.  I  at  once 
said  the  University  Club — to  my  mind  a  masterpiece. 
He  approved,  and  a  great  peace  filled  our  automobile; 
in  which  peace  we  expanded.  He  asked  me  what  build 
ing  in  the  world  made  the  strongest  appeal  to  me,  and 
I  at  once  said  the  Strozzi  Palace  at  Florence.  Whereat 
he  was  decidedly  sympathetic. 

"Fifth  Avenue,"  I  said,  "always  reminds  me  of 
Florence  and  the  Strozzi.  .  .  .The  cornices,  you  know." 

He  stopped  the  automobile  under  the  Gorham  store 

27 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

and  displayed  to  me  the  finest  cornice  in  New  York, 
and  told  me  how  Stanford  White  had  put  up  several 
experimental  cornices  there  before  arriving  at  finality. 
Indeed,  a  great  cornice !  I  admit  I  was  somewhat  dashed 
by  the  information  that  most  cornices  in  New  York  are 
made  of  cast  iron ;  but  only  for  a  moment !  What,  after 
all,  do  I  care  what  a  cornice  is  made  of,  so  long  as  it 
juts  proudly  out  from  the  fagade  and  helps  the  street 
to  a  splendid  and  formidable  sky-line?  I  had  neither 
read  nor  heard  a  word  of  the  cornices  of  New  York,  and 
yet  for  me  New  York  was  first  and  last  the  city  of  effec 
tive  cornices!  (Which  merely  shows  how  eyes  differ!) 
The  cornice  must  remind  you  of  Italy,  and  through  Italy 
of  the  Renaissance.  And  is  it  not  the  boast  of  the 
United  States  to  be  a  renaissance?  I  always  felt  that 
there  was  something  obscurely  symbolic  in  the  New 
York  cornice — symbolic  of  the  necessary  qualities  of  a 
renaissance,  half  cruel  and  half  humane. 

The  critical  European  excusably  expects  a  very  great 
deal  from  Fifth  Avenue,  as  being  the  principal  shopping 
street  of  the  richest  community  in  the  world.  (I  speak 
not  of  the  residential  blocks  north  of  Fifty-ninth  Street, 
whose  beauty  and  interest  fall  perhaps  far  short  of  their 
pretensions.)  And  the  critical  European  will  not  be 
disappointed,  unless  his  foible  is  to  be  disappointed — 
as,  in  fact,  occasionally  happens.  Except  for  the  miserly 
splitting,  here  and  there  in  the  older  edifices,  of  an  in 
adequate  ground  floor  into  a  mezzanine  and  a  shallow 
box  (a  device  employed  more  frankly  and  usefully  with 
an  outer  flight  of  steps  on  the  East  Side),  there  is  noth 
ing  mean  in  the  whole  street  from  the  Plaza  to  Wash- 

28 


STREETS 

ington  Square.  A  lot  of  utterly  mediocre  architecture 
there  is,  of  course — the  same  applies  inevitably  to  every 
long  street  in  every  capital — but  the  general  effect  is 
homogeneous  and  fine,  and,  above  all,  grandly  generous. 
And  the  alternation  of  high  and  low  buildings  produces 
not  infrequently  the  most  agreeable  architectural  acci 
dents  :  for  example,  seen  from  about  Thirtieth  Street,  the 
pale-pillared,  squat  structure  of  the  Knickerbocker 
Trust  against  a  background  of  the  lofty  red  of  the 
^Eolian  Building.  .  .  .  And  then,  that  great  white  store 
on  the  opposite  pavement !  The  single  shops,  as  well  as 
the  general  stores  and  hotels  on  Fifth  Avenue,  are  im 
pressive  in  the  lavish  spaciousness  of  their  disposition. 
Neither  stores  nor  shops  could  have  been  conceived,  or 
could  be  kept,  by  merchants  without  genuine  imagina 
tion  and  faith. 

And  the  glory  of  the  thoroughfare  inspires  even  those 
who  only  walk  up  and  down  it.  It  inspires  particularly 
the  mounted  policeman  as  he  reigns  over  a  turbulent 
crossing.  It  inspires  the  women,  and  particularly  the 
young  women,  as  they  pass  in  front  of  the  windows,  own 
ing  their  contents  in  thought.  I  sat  once  with  an  old, 
white-haired,  and  serious  gentleman,  gazing  through 
glass  at  Fifth  Avenue,  and  I  ventured  to  say  to  him, 
" There  are  fine  women  on  Fifth  Avenue."  " By  Jove!" 
he  exclaimed,  with  deep  conviction,  and  his  eyes  sud 
denly  fired,  " there  are!"  On  the  whole,  I  think  that, 
in  their  carriages  or  on  their  feet,  they  know  a  little 
better  how  to  do  justice  to  a  fine  thoroughfare  than 
the  women  of  any  other  capital  in  my  acquaintance. 
I  have  driven  rapidly  in  a  fast  car,  clinging  to  my  hat 

29 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

and  my  hair  against  the  New  York  wind,  from  one  end 
of  Fifth  Avenue  to  the  other,  and  what  with  the  sunshine, 
and  the  flags  wildly  waving  in  the  sunshine,  and  the  blue 
sky  and  the  cornices  jutting  into  it  and  the  roofs  scrap 
ing  it,  and  the  large  whiteness  of  the  stores,  and  the  in 
vitation  of  the  signs,  and  the  display  of  the  windows, 
and  the  swift  sinuousness  of  the  other  cars,  and  the 
proud  opposing  processions  of  American  subjects — what 
with  all  this  and  with  the  supreme  imperialism  of  the 
mounted  policeman,  I  have  been  positively  intoxicated! 
'  And  yet  possibly  the  greatest  moment  in  the  life  of 
Fifth  Avenue  is  at  dusk,  when  dusk  falls  at  tea-time. 
The  street  lamps  flicker  into  a  steady,  steely  blue, 
and  the  windows  of  the  hotels  and  restaurants  throw 
a  yellow  radiance;  all  the  shops — especially  the  jewelers' 
shops — become  enchanted  treasure-houses,  whose  in 
teriors  recede  away  behind  their  facades  into  infinity; 
and  the  endless  files  of  innumerable  vehicles,  interlacing 
and  swerving,  put  forth  each  a  pair  of  glittering  eyes.  .  .  . 
Come  suddenly  upon  it  all,  from  the  leafy  fastnesses  of 
Central  Park,  round  the  corner  from  the  Plaza  Hotel, 
and  wait  your  turn  until  the  arm  of  the  policeman,  whose 
blue  coat  is  now  whitened  with  dust,  permits  your 
restive  chauffeur  to  plunge  down  into  the  main  currents 
of  the  city.  .  .  .  You  will  have  then  the  most  grandiose 
impression  that  New  York  is,  in  fact,  inhabited;  and  that 
even  though  the  spectacular  luxury  of  New  York  be 
nearly  as  much  founded  upon  social  injustice  and  poverty 
as  any  imperfect  human  civilization  in  Europe,  it  is  a 
boon  to  be  alive  therein!  ...  In  half  an  hour,  in  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour,  the  vitality  is  clean  gone  out  of  the 

30 


STREETS 

street.  The  shops  have  let  down  their  rich  gathered  cur 
tains,  the  pavements  are  deserted,  and  the  roadway  is 
no  longer  perilous.  And  nothing  save  a  fire  will  arouse 
Fifth  Avenue  till  the  next  morning.  Even  on  an  elec 
tion  night  the  sole  sign  in  Fifth  Avenue  of  the  disorder  of 
politics  will  be  a  few  long  strips  of  tape-paper  wreathing 
in  the  breeze  on  the  asphalt  under  the  lonely  lamps. 

« 

It  is  not  easy  for  a  visiting  stranger  in  New  York 
to  get  away  from  Fifth  Avenue.  The  street  seems  to 
hold  him  fast.  There  might  almost  as  well  be  no  other 
avenues;  and  certainly  the  word  "Fifth"  has  lost  all 
its  numerical  significance  in  current  usage.  A  youthful 
musical  student,  upon  being  asked  how  many  symphonies 
Beethoven  had  composed,  replied  four,  and  obstinately 
stuck  to  it  that  Beethoven  had  only  composed  four. 
Called  upon  to  enumerate  the  four,  he  answered  thus, 
the  C  minor,  the  Eroica,  the  Pastoral,  and  the  Ninth. 
"Ninth"  had  lost  its  numerical  significance  for  that 
student.  A  similar  phenomenon  of  psychology  has  hap 
pened  with  the  streets  and  avenues  of  New  York.  Euro 
peans  are  apt  to  assume  that  to  tack  numbers  instead  of 
names  on  to  the  thoroughfares  of  a  city  is  to  impair 
their  idejitities  and  individualities'."  Hot  a  bit!  The 
numbers  grow  into  names.  "That  is  all.  Such  is  the 
mysterious  poetic  force  of  the  human  mind!  That  curt 
word  "Fifth"  signifies  as  much  to  the  New-Yorker  as 
"Boulevard  des  Italiens"  to  the  Parisian.  As  for  the 
possibility  of  confusion,  would  any  New-Yorker  ever 
confuse  Fourteenth  with  Thirteenth  or  Fifteenth  Street, 
or  twenty-third  with  Twenty-second  or  Twenty-fourth, 

3* 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

or  Forty-second  with  One  Hundred  and  Forty-second, 
or  One  Hundred  and  Twenty-fifth  with  anything  else 
whatever?  Yes,  when  the  Parisian  confuses  the  Champs 
Elysees  with  the  Avenue  de  1' Opera !  When  the  Parisian 
arrives  at  this  stage — even  then  Fifth  Avenue  will  not 
be  confused  with  Sixth! 

One  day,  in  the  unusual  silence  of  an  election  morning, 
I  absolutely  determined  to  see  something  of  the  New  York 
that  lies  beyond  Fifth  Avenue,  and  I  slipped  off  west 
ward  along  Thirty-fourth  Street,  feeling  adventurous. 
The  excursion  was  indeed  an  adventure.  I  came  across 
Broadway  and  Sixth  Avenue  together!  Sixth  Avenue, 
with  its  barbaric  paving,  surely  could  not  be  under  the 
same  administration  as  Fifth!  Between  Sixth  and 
Seventh  I  met  a  sinister  but  genial  ruffian,  proudly 
wearing  the  insignia  of  Tammany;  and  soon  I  met  a  lot 
more  of  them:  jolly  fellows,  apparently,  yet  somehow 
conveying  to  me  the  suspicion  that  in  a  saloon  shindy 
they  might  prove  themselves  my  superiors.  (I  was  told 
in  New  York,  and  by  the  best  people  in  New  York,  that 
Tammany  was  a  blot  on  the  social  system  of  the  city. 
But  I  would  not  have  it  so.  I  would  call  it  a  part  of 
the  social  system,  just  as  much  a  part  of  the  social  system, 
and  just  as  expressive  of  the  national  character,  as  the 
fine  schools,  the  fine  hospitals,  the  superlative  business 
organizations,  or  Mr.  George  M.  Cohan's  Theater.  A 
civilization  is  indivisibly  responsible  for  itself.  It 
may  not,  on  the  Day  of  Jugdment,  or  any  other  day, 
lessen  its  collective  responsibility  by  baptizing  certain 
portions  of  its  organism  as  extraneous  " blots"  dropped 
thereon  from  without.)  To  continue — after  Seventh 

32 


STREETS 

Avenue  the  declension  was  frank.  In  the  purlieus  of  the 
Five  Towns  themselves — compared  with  which  Pitts- 
burg  is  seemingly  Paradise — I  have  never  trod  such 
horrific  sidewalks.  I  discovered  huge  freight-trains 
shunting  all  over  Tenth  and  Eleventh  Avenues,  and 
frail  flying  bridges  erected  from  sidewalk  to  sidewalk, 
for  the  convenience  of  a  brave  and  hardy  populace. 
I  was  surrounded  in  the  street  by  menacing  locomotives 
and  crowds  of  Italians,  and  in  front  of  me  was  a  great 
Italian  steamer.  I  felt  as  though  Fifth  Avenue  was  a 
three  days'  journey  away,  through  a  hostile  country. 
And  yet  I  had  been  walking  only  twenty  minutes!  I 
regained  Fifth  with  relief,  and  had  learned  a  lesson.  In 
future,  if  asked  how  many  avenues  there  are  in  New  York 
I  would  insist  that  there  are  three :  Lexington,  Madison, 

and  Fifth. 

• 

The  chief  characteristic  of  Broadway  is  its  inter- 
minability.  Everybody  knows,  roughly,  where  it  be 
gins,  but  I  doubt  if  even  the  topographical  experts  of 
Albany  know  just  where  it  ends.  It  is  a  street  that 
inspires  respect  rather  than  enthusiasm.  In  the  day 
time  all  the  uptown  portion  of  it — and  as  far  down 
town  as  Ninth  Street — has  a  provincial  aspect.  If 
Fifth  Avenue  is  metropolitan  and  exclusive,  Broadway 
is  not.  Broadway  lacks  distinction,  it  lacks  any  sort 
of  impressiveness,  save  in  its  first  two  miles,  which  do — 
especially  the  southern  mile — strike  you  with  a  vague 
and  uneasy  awe.  And  it  was  here  that  I  experienced 
my  keenest  disappointment  in  the  United  States. 

I  went  through  sundry  disappointments.     I  had  ex- 

3  33 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

pected  to  be  often  asked  how  much  I  earned.  I  never  was 
asked.  I  had  expected  to  be  often  informed  by  casual 
acquaintances  of  their  exact  income.  Nobody,  save 
an  interviewer  or  so  and  the  president  of  a  great  trust, 
ever  passed  me  even  a  hint  as  to  the  amount  of  his 
income.  I  had  expected  to  find  an  inordinate  amount  of 
tippling  in  clubs  and  hotels.  I  found,  on  the  contrary, 
a  very  marked  sobriety.  I  had  expected  to  receive  many 
hard  words  and  some  insolence  from  paid  servants, 
such  as  train-men,  tram-men,  lift-boys,  and  policemen. 
From  this  class,  as  from  the  others,  I  received  nothing 
but  politeness,  except  in  one  instance.  That  instance, 
by  the  way,  was  a  barber  in  an  important  hotel,  whom 
I  had  most  respectfully  requested  to  refrain  from 
bumping  my  head  about.  "Why?"  he  demanded. 
"Because  I've  got  a  headache,"  I  said.  "Then  why 
didn't  you  tell  me  at  first?"  he  crushed  me.  "Did 
you  expect  me  to  be  a  thought-reader?"  But,  indeed, 
I  could  say  a  lot  about  American  barbers.  I  had  ex 
pected  to  have  my  tempting  fob  snatched.  It  was  not 
snatched.  I  had  expected  to  be  asked,  at  the  moment 
of  landing,  for  my  mature  opinion  of  the  United  States, 
and  again  at  intervals  of  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour, 
4^  ^^  day  and  night,  throughout  my  stay.  But  I  had  been 
in  America  at  least  ten  days  before  the  question  was  put 
to  me,  even  in  jest.  I  had  expected  to  be  surrounded 
by  boasting  and  impatient  vanity  concerning  the  achieve 
ments  of  the  United  States  and  the  citizens  thereof. 
I  literally  never  heard  a  word  of  national  boasting,  nor 
observed  the  slightest  impatience  under  criticism.  .  .  . 
I  say  I  had  expected  these  things.  I  would  be  more 

34 


A    BUSY    DAY    ON    THE    CURB    MARKET 


STREETS 

correct  to  say  that  I  should  have  expected  them  if 
I  had  had  a  rumor  -  believing  mind:  which  I  have 
not. 

But  I  really  did  expect  to  witness  an  overwhelming 
violence  of  traffic  and  movement  in  lower  Broadway 
and  the  renowned  business  streets  in  its  vicinity.  And  I 
really  was  disappointed  by  the  ordinariness  of  the  scene, 
which  could  be  well  matched  in  half  a  dozen  places  in 
Europe,  and  beaten  in  one  or  two.  If  but  once  I  had 
been  shoved  into  the  gutter  by  a  heedless  throng  going 
furiously  upon  its  financial  ways,  I  should  have  been 
content.  .  .  .  The  legendary  "American  rush"  is  to  me  a 
fable.  Whether  it  ever  existed  I  know  not ;  but  I  certain 
ly  saw  no  trace  of  it,  either  in  New  York  or  Chicago. 
I  dare  say  I  ought  to  have  gone  to  Seattle  for  it.  My 
first  sight  of  a  stock-market  roped  off  in  the  street 
was  an  acute  disillusionment.  In  agitation  it  could  not 
have  competed  with  a  sheep-market.  In  noise  it  was  a 
muffled  silence  compared  with  the  fine  racket  that  en 
livens  the  air  outside  the  Paris  Bourse.  I  saw  also  an 
ordinary  day  in  the  Stock  Exchange.  Faint  excitations 
were  afloat  in  certain  corners,  but  I  honestly  deemed  the 
affair  tame.  A  vast  litter  of  paper  on  the  floor,  a  vast 
assemblage  of  hats  pitched  on  the  tops  of  telephone- 
boxes — these  phenomena  do  not  amount  to  a  hustle. 
Earnest  students  of  hustle  should  visit  Paris  or  Milan. 
The  fact  probably  is  that  the  perfecting  of  mechanical 
contrivances  in  the  United  States  has  killed  hustle  as 
a  diversion  for  the  eyes  and  ears.  The  mechanical 
side  of  the  Exchange  was  wonderful  and  delightful. 


35 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

The  skyscrapers  that  cluster  about  the  lower  end  of 
Broadway — their  natural  home — were  as  impressive  as 
I  could  have  desired,  but  not  architecturally.  For 
they  could  only  be  felt,  not  seen.  And  even  in  situa 
tions  where  the  sky-scraper  is  properly  visible,  it  is,  as  a 
rule,  to  my  mind,  architecturally  a  failure.  I  regret  for 
my  own  sake  that  I  could  not  be  more  sympathetic 
toward  the  existing  sky-scraper  as  an  architectural 
entity,  because  I  had  assuredly  no  Europen  prejudice 
against  the  sky-scraper  as  such.  The  objection  of 
most  people  to  the  sky-scraper  is  merely  that  it  is  un 
usual — the  instinctivej3bj  ection  of  most  people  to  every 
thing  that  is  original  enough  to  violate  tradition !  I,  on 
the  contrary,  as  a  convinced  modernist,  would  applaud 
the  unusualness  of  the  sky-scraper.  Nevertheless,  I 
cannot  possibly  share  the  feelings  of  patriotic  New- 
Yorkers  who  discover  architectural  grandeur  in,  say,  the 
Flat  Iron  Building  or  the  Metropolitan  Life  Insurance 
Building.  To  me  they  confuse  the  poetical  idea  of 
these  buildings  with  the  buildings  themselves.  I  eagerly 
admit  that  the  bold,  prow-like  notion  of  the  Flat  Iron 
cutting  northward  is  a  splendid  notion,  an  inspiring 
notion;  it  thrills.  But  the  building  itself  is  ugly — nay, 
it  is  adverbially  ugly;  and  no  reading  of  poetry  into  it 
will  make  it  otherwise. 

Similarly,  the  Metropolitan  Building  is  tremendous. 
It  is  a  grand  sight,  but  it  is  an  ugly  sight.  The  men  who 
thought  of  it,  who  first  conceived  the  notion  of  it,  were 
poets.  They  said,  "We  will  cause  to  be  constructed  the 
highest  building  in  the  world;  we  will  bring  into  exist 
ence  the  most  amazing  advertisement  that  an  insurance 

36 


A    WELL-KNOWN    WALL    STREET   CHARACTER 


STREETS 

company  ever  had."  That  is  good;  it  is  superb;  it  is 
a  proof  of  heroic  imagination.  But  the  actual  designers 
of  the  building  did  not  rise  to  the  height  of  it ;  and  if  any 
poetry  is  left  in  it,  it  is  not  their  fault.  Think  what 
McKim  might  have  accomplished  on  that  site,  and  in 
those  dimensions! 

Certain  architects,  feeling  the  lack  of  imagination  in 
the  execution  of  these  enormous  buildings,  have  set 
their  imagination  to  work,  but  in  a  perverse  way  and 
without  candidly  recognizing  the  conditions  imposed 
upon  them  by  the  sky-scraper  form:  and  the  result 
here  and  there  has  been  worse  than  dull;  it  has  been 
distressing.  But  here  and  there,  too,  one  sees  the  evi 
dence  of  real  understanding  and  taste.  If  every  tenant 
of  a  sky-scraper  demands — as  I  am  informed  he  does — 
the  same  windows,  and  radiators  under  every  window, 
then  the  architect  had  better  begin  by  accepting  that 
demand  openly,  with  no  fanciful  or  pseudo-imaginative 
pretense  that  things  are  not  what  they  are.  The 
Ashland  Building,  on  Fourth  Avenue,  where  the  archi 
tectural  imagination  has  exercised  itself  soberly,  honestly, 
and  obediently,  appeared  to  me  to  be  a  satisfactory  and 
agreeable  sky-scraper;  and  it  does  not  stand  alone  as 
the  promise  that  a  new  style  will  ultimately  be  evolved. 

In  any  case,  a  great  deal  of  the  poetry  of  New  York 
is  due  to  the  sky-scraper.  At  dusk  the  effect  of  the 
massed  sky-scrapers  illuminated  from  within,  as  seen 
from  any  high  building  up-town,  is  prodigiously  beau 
tiful,  and  it  is  unique  in  the  cities  of  this  world.  The 
early  night  effect  of  the  whole  town,  topped  by  the  afore 
said  Metropolitan  tower,  seen  from  the  New  Jersey 

37 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

shore,  is  stupendous,  and  resembles  some  enchanted 
city  of  the  next  world  rather  than  of  this.  And  the  fact 
that  a  very  prominent  item  in  the  perspective  is  a  fiery 
representation  of  a  frothing  glass  of  beer  inconceivably 
large — well,  this  fact  too  has  its  importance. 

But  in  the  sky-scrapers  there  is  a  deeper  romanticism 
than  that  which  disengages  itself  from  them  externally. 
You  must  enter  them  in  order  to  appreciate  them,  in 
order  to  respond  fully  to  their  complex  appeal.  Out 
side,  they  often  have  the  air  of  being  nothing  in  par 
ticular;  at  best  the  facade  is  far  too  modest  in  its  revela 
tion  of  the  interior.  You  can  quite  easily  walk  by  a 
sky-scraper  on  Broadway  without  noticing  it.  But  you 
cannot  actually  go  into  the  least  of  them  and  not  be 
impressed.  You  are  in  a  palace.  You  are  among 
marbles  and  porphyries.  You  breathe  easily  in  vast 
and  brilliant  foyers  that  never  see  daylight.  And  then 
you  come  to  those  mysterious  palisaded  shafts  with 
which  the  building  and  every  other  building  in  New 
York  is  secretly  honeycombed,  and  the  palisade  is  opened 
and  an  elevator  snatches  you  up.  I  think  of  American 
cities  as  enormous  agglomerations  in  whose  inmost  dark 
recesses  innumerable  elevators  are  constantly  ascending 
and  descending,  like  the  angels  of  the  ladder.  .  . . 

The  elevator  ejects  you.  You  are  taken  into  dazzling 
daylight,  into  what  is  modestly  called  a  business  office; 
but  it  resembles  in  its  grandeur  no  European  business 
office,  save  such  as  may  have  been  built  by  an  American. 
You  look  forth  from  a  window,  and  lo !  New  York  and 
the  Hudson  are  beneath  you,  and  you  are  in  the  skies. 
And  in  the  warmed  stillness  of  the  room  you  hear  the 

3* 


'STREETS 

wind  raging  and  whistling,  as  you  would  have  imagined 
it  could  only  rage  and  whistle  in  the  rigging  of  a  three- 
master  at  sea.  There  are,  however,  a  dozen  more  stories 
above  this  story.  You  walk  from  chamber  to  chamber, 
and  in  answer  to  inquiry  learn  that  the  rent  of  this  one 
suite — among  so  many — is  over  thirty-six  thousand 
dollars  a  year!  And  you  reflect  that,  to  the  beholder 
in  the  street,  all  that  is  represented  by  one  narrow  row 
of  windows,  lost  in  a  diminishing  chess-board  of  windows. 
And  you  begin  to  realize  what  a  sky-scraper  is,  and  the 
poetry  of  it. 

More  romantic  even  than  the  sky-scraper  finished 
and  occupied  is  the  sky-scraper  in  process  of  construc 
tion.  From  no  mean  height,  listening  to  the  sweet  drawl 
of  the  steam-drill,  I  have  watched  artisans  like  dwarfs 
at  work  still  higher,  among  knitted  steel,  seen  them 
balance  themselves  nonchalantly  astride  girders  swing 
ing  in  space,  seen  them  throwing  rivets  to  one  another 
and  never  missing  one;  seen  also  a  huge  crane  collapse 
under  an  undue  strain,  and,  crumpling  like  tinfoil, 
carelessly  drop  its  load  onto  the  populous  sidewalk 
below.  That  particular  mishap  obviously  raised  the 
fear  of  death  among  a  considerable  number  of  people, 
but  perhaps  only  for  a  moment.  Anybody  in  America 
will  tell  you  without  a  tremor  (but  with  pride)  that  each 
story  of  a  sky-scraper  means  a  life  sacrificed.  Twenty 
stories — twenty  men  snuffed  out;  thirty  stories — thirty 
men.  A  building  of  some  sixty  stories  is  now  going  up 
—sixty  corpses,  sixty  funerals,  sixty  domestic  hearths  to 
be  slowly  rearranged,  and  the  registrars  alone  know  how 
many  widows,  orphans,  and  other  loose  by-products! 

39 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

And  this  mortality,  I  believe,  takes  no  account  of  the 
long  battles  that  are  sometimes  fought,  but  never  yet  to 
a  finish,  in  the  steel  webs  of  those  upper  floors  when  the 
labor-unions  have  a  fit  of  objecting  more  violently  than 
usual  to  non-union  labor.  In  one  celebrated  building, 
I  heard,  the  non-unionists  contracted  an  unfortunate 
habit  of  getting  crippled;  and  three  of  them  were  in 
discreet  enough  to  put  themselves  under  a  falling  girder 
that  killed  them,  while  two  witnesses  who  were  ready 
to  give  certain  testimony  in  regard  to  the  mishap 
vanished  completely  out  of  the  world,  and  have  never 
since  been  heard  of.  And  so  on.  What  more  natural 
than  that  the  employers  should  form  a  private  associa 
tion  for  bringing  to  a  close  these  interesting  hazards? 
You  may  see  the  leading  spirit  of  the  association.  You 
may  walk  along  the  street  with  him.  He  knows  he  is 
shadowed,  and  he  is  quite  cheerful  about  it.  His  re 
volver  is  always  very  ready  for  an  emergency.  Nobody 
seems  to  regard  this  state  of  affairs  as  odd  enough  for  any 
prolonged  comment.  There  it  is!  It  is  accepted.  It 
is  part  of  the  American  dailiness.  Nobody,  at  any  rate 
in  the  comfortable  clubs,  seems  even  to  consider  that 
the  original  cause  of  the  warfare  is  aught  but  a  homi 
cidal  cussedness  on  the  part  of  the  unions.  ...  I  say 
that  these  accidents  and  these  guerrillas  mysteriously 
and  grimly  proceeding  in  the  skyey  fabric  of  metal- 
ribbed  constructions,  do  really  form  part  of  the  poetry  of 
life  in  America — or  should  it  be  the  poetry  of  death? 
Assuredly  they  are  a  spectacular  illustration  of  that 
sublime,  romantic  contempt  for  law  and  for  human 
life  which,  to  a  European,  is  the  most  disconcerting 

40 


STREETS 

factor  in  the  social  evolution  of  your  States.  I  have 
sat  and  listened  to  tales  from  journalists  and  other 
learned  connoisseurs  till —  But  enough! 

• 

When  I  left  New  York  and  went  to  Washington  I 
was  congratulated  on  having  quitted  the  false  America 
for  the  real.  When  I  came  to  Boston  I  received  the 
sympathies  of  everybody  in  Boston  on  having  been  put 
off  for  so  long  with  spurious  imitations  of  America,  and  a 
sigh  of  happy  relief  went  up  that  I  had  at  length  got 
into  touch  with  a  genuine  American  city.  When,  after 
a  long  pilgrimage,  I  attained  Chicago,  I  was  positively 
informed  that  Chicago  alone  was  the  gate  of  the  United 
States,  and  that  everything  east  of  Chicago  was  negligible 
and  even  misleading.  And  when  I  entered  Indianapolis 
I  discovered  that  Chicago  was  a  mushroom  and  a  suburb 
of  Warsaw,  and  that  its  pretension  to  represent  the 
United  States  was  grotesque,  the  authentic  center  of  the 
United  States  being  obviously  Indianapolis.  .  .  .  The 
great  towns  love  thus  to  affront  one  another,  and  their 
demeanor  in  the  game  resembles  the  gamboling  of  young 
tigers — it  is  half  playful  and  half  ferocious.  For  myself, 
I  have  to  say  that  my  heart  was  large  enough  to  hold 
all  I  saw.  While  I  admit  that  Indianapolis  struck  me  as 
very  characteristically  American,  I  assert  that  the  un 
reality  of  New  York  escaped  me.  It  appeared  to  me 
that  New  York  was  quite  a  real  city,  and  European 
geographies  (apt  to  err,  of  course,  in  matters  of  detail) 
usually  locate  it  in  America. 

Having  regard  to  the  healthy  mutual  jealousy  of  the 
great  towns,  I  feel  that  I  am  carrying  audacity  to  the 

41 


.YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

point  of  foolhardiness  when  I  state  that  the  streets  of 
every  American  city  I  saw  reminded  me  on  the  whole 
rather  strongly  of  the  streets  of  all  the  others.  What 
inhabitants  of  what  city  could  forgive  this?  Yet  I  must 
state  it.  Much  of  what  I  have  said  of  the  streets  of  New 
York  applies,  in  my  superficial  opinion,  for  instance,  to 
the  streets  of  Chicago.  It  is  well  known  that  to  the 
Chinaman  all  Westerners  look  alike.  No  tourist  on  his 
first  visit  to  a  country  so  astonishing  as  the  United  States 
is  very  different  from  a  Chinaman;  the  tourist  should 
reconcile  himself  to  that  deep  truth.  It  is  desolating 
to  think  that  a  second  visit  will  reveal  to  me  the  blind 
ness,  the  distortions,  and  the  wrong-headedness  of 
my  first.  But  even  as  a  Chinaman  I  did  notice  subtle 
differences  between  New  York  and  Chicago.  As  one 
who  was  brought  up  in  a  bleak  and  uncanny  climate, 
where  soft  coal  is  in  universal  use,  I  at  once  felt  more  at 
home  in  Chicago  than  I  could  ever  do  "in  New  York. 
The  old  instinct  to  wash  the  hands  and  change  the  collar 
every  couple  of  hours  instantly  returned  to  me  in  Chicago, 
together  with  the  old  comforting  conviction  that  a  harsh 
climate  is  a  climate  healthy  for  body  and  spirit.  And, 
because  it  is  laden  with  soot,  the  air  of  Chicago  is  a  great 
mystifier  and  beautifier.  Atmospheric  effects  may  be 
seen  there  that  are  unobtainable  without  the  combustion 
of  soft  coal.  Talk,  for  example,  as  much  as  you  please 
about  the  electric  sky-signs  of  Broadway — not  all  of 
them  together  will  write  as  much  poetry  on  the  sky  as 
the  single  word  "Illinois"  that  hangs  without  a  clue  to 
its  suspension  in  the  murky  dusk  over  Michigan  Avenue. 
The  visionary  aspects  of  Chicago  are  incomparable. 

42 


STREETS 

Another  difference,  of  quite  another  order,  between 
New  York  and  Chicago  is  that  Chicago  is  self-conscious. 
New  York  is  not ;  no  metropolis  ever  is.  You  are  aware 
of  the  self-consciousness  of  Chicago  as  soon  as  you  are 
aware  of  its  bitumen.  The  quality  demands  sympathy, 
and  wins  it  by  its  wistf illness.  Chicago  is  openly  anxious 
about  its  soul.  I  liked  that.  I  wish  I  could  see  a  livelier 
anxiety  concerning  the  municipal  soul  in  certain  cities  of 
Europe. 

Perhaps  the  least  subtle  difference  between  New  York 
and  Chicago  springs  from  the  fact  that  the  handsomest 
part  of  New  York  is  the  center  of  New  York,  whereas 
the  center  of  Chicago  is  disappointing.  It  does  not 
impress.  I  was  shown,  in  the  center  of  Chicago,  the 
first  sky-scraper  that  the  world  had  ever  seen.  I  visited 
with  admiration  what  was  said  to  be  the  largest  depart 
ment  store  in  the  world.  I  visited  with  a  natural 
rapture  the  largest  book-store  in  the  world.  I  was  in 
formed  (but  respectfully  doubt)  that  Chicago  is  the  great 
est  port  in  the  world.  I  could  easily  credit,  from  the 
evidence  of  my  own  eyes,  that  it  is  the  greatest  railway 
center  in  the  world.  But  still  my  imagination  was  not 
fired,  as  it  has  been  fired  again  and  again  by  far  lesser 
and  far  less  interesting  places.  Nobody  could  call 
Wabash  Avenue  spectacular,  and  nobody  surely  would 
assert  that  State  Street  is  on  a  plane  with  the  collective 
achievements  of  the  city  of  which  it  is  the  principal 
thoroughfare.  The  truth  is  that  Chicago  lacks  at  pres 
ent  a  rallying-point — some  Place  de  la  Concorde  or  Arc 
de  Triomphe — something  for  its  biggest  streets  to  try  to 
live  up  to.  A  convocation  of  elevated  railroads  is  not 

,43 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

enough.  It  seemed  to  me  that  Jackson  Boulevard  or 
Van  Buren  Street,  with  fine  crescents  abutting  opposite 
Grant  Park  and  Garfield  Park,  and  a  magnificent  square 
at  the  intersection  of  Ashland  Avenue,  might  ultimately 
be  the  chief  sight  and  exemplar  of  Chicago.  Why  not? 
Should  not  the  leading  thoroughfare  lead  boldly  to  the 
lake  instead  of  shunning  it  ?  I  anticipate  the  time  when 
the  municipal  soul  of  Chicago  will  have  found  in  its 
streets  as  adequate  expression  as  it  has  already  found 
in  its  boulevards. 

Perhaps  if  I  had  not  made  the  "grand  tour"  of  those 
boulevards,  I  might  have  been  better  satisfied  with  the 
streets  of  Chicago.  The  excursion,  in  an  automobile, 
occupied  something  like  half  of  a  frosty  day  that  ended 
in  torrents  of  rain — apparently  a  typical  autumn  day 
in  Chicago!  Before  it  had  proceeded  very  far  I  knew 
that  there  was  a  sufficient  creative  imagination  on  the 
shore  of  Lake  Michigan  to  carry  through  any  municipal 
enterprise,  however  vast,  to  a  generous  and  final  con 
clusion.  The  conception  of  those  boulevards  discloses  a 
tremendous  audacity  and  faith.  And  as  you  roll  along 
the  macadam,  threading  at  intervals  a  wide-stretching 
park,  you  are  overwhelmed — at  least  I  was — by  the 
completeness  of  the  scheme's  execution  and  the  lavishness 
with  which  the  system  is  in  every  detail  maintained  and 
kept  up. 

You  stop  to  inspect  a  conservatory,  and  find  yourself 
in  a  really  marvelous  landscape  garden,  set  with  statues, 
all  under  glass  and  heated,  where  the  gaffers  of  Chicago 
are  collected  .together  to  discuss  interminably  the  excit 
ing  politics  of  a  city  anxious  about  its  soul.  And  while 

44 


STREETS 

listening  to  them  with  one  ear,  with  the  other  you  may 
catch  the  laconic  tale  of  a  park  official's  perilous  and  suc 
cessful  vendetta  against  the  forces  of  graft. 

And  then  you  resume  the  circuit  and  accomplish  many 
more  smooth,  curving,  tree-lined  miles,  varied  by  a  jolt 
ing  section,  or  by  the  faint  odor  of  the  Stock-yards,  or 
by  a  halt  to  allow  the  longest  freight-train  in  the  world 
to  cross  your  path.  You  have  sighted  in  the  distance 
universities,  institutions,  even  factories ;  you  have  passed 
through  many  inhabited  portions  of  the  endless  boule 
vard,  but  you  have  not  actually  touched  hands  with  the 
city  since  you  left  it  at  the  beginning  of  the  ride.  Then 
at  last,  as  darkness  falls,  you  feel  that  you  are  coming 
to  the  city  again,  but  from  another  point  of  the  compass. 
You  have  rounded  the  circle  of  its  millions.  You  need 
only  think  of  the  unkempt,  shabby,  and  tangled  out 
skirts  of  New  York,  or  of  any  other  capital  city,  to  realize 
the  miracle  that  Chicago  has  put  among  her  assets.  .  .  . 

You  descry  lanes  of  water  in  the  twilight,  and  learn 
that  in  order  to  prevent  her  drainage  from  going  into 
the  lake  Chicago  turned  a  river  back  in  its  course  and 
compelled  it  to  discharge  ultimately  into  the  Mississippi. 
That  is  the  story.  You  feel  that  it  is  exactly  what 
Chicago,  alone  among  cities,  would  have  the  imagination 
and  the  courage  to  do.  Some  man  must  have  risen  from 
his  bed  one  morning  with  the  idea,  "Why  not  make 
the  water  flow  the  other  way?"  And  then  gone,  per 
haps  diffidently,  to  his  fellows  in  charge  of  the  city  with 
the  suggestive  query,  "Why  not  make  the  water  flow 
the  other  way  ?"  And  been  laughed  at !  Only  the  thing 
was  done  in  the  end!  I  seem  to  have  heard  that  there 

45 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

was  an  epilogue  to  this  story,  relating  how  certain  other 
great  cities  showed  a  narrow  objection  to  Chicago  drain 
ing  herself  in  the  direction  of  the  Mississippi,  and  how 
Chicago,  after  all,  succeeded  in  persuading  those  whom 
it  was  necessary  to  persuade  that,  whereas  her  drainage 
was  unsuited  to  Lake  Michigan,  it  would  consort  well 
with  the  current  of  the  Mississippi. 

And  then,  in  the  night  and  in  the  rain,  you  swerve 
round  some  corner  into  the  straight,  by  Grant  Park,  in 
full  sight  of  one  of  the  most  dazzling  spectacles  that 
Chicago  or  any  other  city  can  offer — Michigan  Avenue 
on  a  wet  evening.  Each  of  the  thousands  of  electric 
standards  in  Michigan  Avenue  is  a  cluster  of  six  huge 
globes  (and  yet  they  will  tell  you  in  Paris  that  the  Rue 
de  la  Paix  is  the  best-lit  street  in  the  world),  and  here 
and  there  is  a  red  globe  of  warning.  The  two  lines  of 
light  pour  down  their  flame  into  the  pool  which  is  the 
roadway,  and  you  travel  continually  toward  an  incan 
descent  floor  without  ever  quite  reaching  it,  beneath 
mysterious  words  of  fire  hanging  in  the  invisible  sky !  .  .  . 
The  automobile  stops.  You  get  out,  stiff,  and  murmur 
something  inadequate  about  the  length  and  splendor  of 
those  boulevards.  "Oh,"  you  are  told,  carelessly, 
"those  are  only  the  interior  boulevards.  .  .  .  Nothing! 
You  should  see  our  exterior  boulevards — not  quite 
finished  yet!" 


Ill 

THE    CAPITOL  AND    OTHER   SITES 


Ill 

THE   CAPITOL  AND   OTHER   SITES 

"TTERE,  Jimmy!"  said,  briskly,  a  middle-aged  ad- 
11  ministrative  person  in  easy  attire,  who  apparently 
had  dominion  over  the  whole  floor  beneath  the  dome. 
A  younger  man,  also  in  easy  attire,  answered  the  call  with 
an  alert  smile.  The  elder  pointed  sideways  with  his 
head  at  my  two  friends  and  myself,  and  commanded, 
"Run  them  through  in  thirty  minutes!"  Then,  having 
reached  the  center  of  a  cuspidor  with  all  the  precision  of 
a  character  in  a  Californian  novel,  he  added  benevo 
lently  to  Jimmy,  "Make  it  a  dollar  for  them."  And 
Jimmy,  consenting,  led  us  away. 

In  this  episode  Europe  was  having  her  revenge  on  the 
United  States,  and  I  had  planned  it.  How  often,  in 
half  a  hundred  cities  of  Europe,  had  I  not  observed 
the  American  citizen  seeing  the  sights  thereof  at  high 
speed?  Yes,  even  in  front  of  the  Michael  Angelo  sculp 
tures  in  the  Medici  Chapel  at  Florence  had  I  seen  him, 
watch  in  hand,  and  heard  him  murmur  "Bully!"  to  the 
sculptures  and  the  time  of  the  train  to  his  wife  in  one 
breath !  Now  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  see  Washing 
ton  under  the  normal  conditions  of  a  session.  And  so 
I  took  advantage  of  the  visit  to  Washington  of  two 
friends  on  business  to  see  Washington  hastily,  as  an 
excursionist  pure  and  simple.  I  said  to  the  United 

4  49 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

States,  grimly:  "The  most  important  and  the  most 
imposing  thing  in  all  America  is  surely  the  Capitol  at 
Washington.  Well,  I  will  see  it  as  you  see  the  sacred 
sights  of  Europe.  By  me  Europe  shall  be  revenged.'* 
'  Thus  it  came  about  that  we  had  hired  a  kind  of  car 
riage  known  as  a  "sea-going  hack,"  driven  by  a  negro 
in  dark  blue,  who  was  even  more  picturesque  than  the 
negroes  in  white  who  did  the  menial  work  in  the  classic 
hotel,  and  had  set  forth  frankly  as  excursionists  into 
the  streets  of  Washington,  and  presently  through  the 
celebrated  Pennsylvania  Avenue  had  achieved  entrance 
into  the  Capitol. 

It  was  a  breathless  pilgrimage — this  seeing  of  the 
Capitol.  And  yet  an  impressive  one.  The  Capitol 
is  a  great  place.  I  was  astonished — and  I  admit  at 
once  I  ought  not  to  have  been  astonished — that  the 
Capitol  appeals  to  the  historic  sense  just  as  much  as  any 
other  vast  legislative  palace  of  the  world — and  perhaps 
more  intimately  than  some.  The  sequence  of  its  end 
less  corridors  and  innumerable  chambers,  each  associat 
ed  with  event  or  tradition,  begets  awe.  I  think  it  was 
in  the  rich  Senatorial  reception-room  that  I  first  caught 
myself  being  surprised  that  the  heavy  gilded  and  mar 
moreal  sumptuosity  of  the  decorations  recalled  the 
average  European  palace.  Why  should  I  have  been 
expecting  the  interior  of  the  Capitol  to  consist  of  austere 
bare  walls  and  unornamented  floors?  Perhaps  it  was 
due  to  some  thought  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  But  what 
ever  its  cause,  the  expectation  was  naive  and  derogatory. 
The  young  guide,  Jimmy,  who  by  birth  and  genius  evi 
dently  belonged  to  the  universal  race  of  guides,  was 


THE   CAPITOL  AND   OTHER   SITES 

there  to  keep  my  ideas  right  and  my  eyes  open.  He  was 
infinitely  precious,  and  after  his  own  fashion  would  have 
done  honor  to  any  public  monument  in  the  East.  Such 
men  are  only  bred  in  the  very  shadow  of  genuine 
history. 

"See,"  he  said,  touching  a  wall.     "Painted  by  cele 
brated  Italian  artist  to  look  like  bas-relief!    But  put 
your  hand  flat  against  it,  and  you'll  see  it  isn't  carved!" 
One  might  have  been  in  Italy. 
And  a  little  later  he  was  saying  of  other  painting: 
"Although  painted  in  eighteen  hundred  sixty-five — 
forty-six  years  ago — you  notice  the  flesh  tints  are  as 
fresh  as  if  painted  yesterday!" 

This,  I  think,  was  the  finest  remark  I  ever  heard  a 
guide  make — until  this  same  guide  stepped  in  front  of  a 
portrait  of  Henry  Clay,  and,  after  a  second's  hesitation, 
threw  off  airily,  patronizingly: 

"Henry  Clay — quite  a  good  statesman!" 
But  I  also  contributed  my  excursionist's  share  to 
these  singular  conversations.  In  the  swathed  Senate 
Chamber  I  noticed  two  holland-covered  objects  that 
somehow  reminded  me  of  my  youth  and  of  religious 
dissent.  I  guessed  that  the  daily  proceedings  of  the 
Senate  must  be  opened  with  devotional  exercises,  and 
these  two  objects  seemed  to  me  to  be  proper — why, 
I  cannot  tell — to  the  United  States  Senate;  but  there  was 
one  point  that  puzzled  me. 

"Why,"  I  asked,  "do  you  have  two  harmoniums?" 
"Harmoniums,  sir!"  protested  the  guide,  staggered. 
"Those  are  roll-top  desks." 

If  only  the  floor  could  have  opened  and  swallowed  me 

51 


.YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

up,  as  it  opens  and  swallows  up  the  grand  piano  at  the 
Thomas  concerts  in  Chicago! 

Neither  the  Senate  Chamber  nor  the  Congress  Cham 
ber  was  as  imposing  to  me  as  the  much  less  spacious 
former  Senate  Chamber  and  the  former  Congress  Cham 
ber.  The  old  Senate  Chamber,  being  now  transferred 
to  the  uses  of  supreme  justice,  was  closed  on  the  day  of 
our  visit,  owing  to  the  funeral  of  a  judge.  Europeans 
would  have  acquiesced  in  the  firm  negative  of  its  locked 
doors.  But  my  friends,  being  American,  would  not 
acquiesce.  The  mere  fact  that  the  room  was  not  on 
view  actually  sharpened  their  desire  that  I  should  see  it. 
They  were  deaf  to  refusals.  ...  I  saw  that  room.  And 
I  was  glad  that  I  saw  it,  for  in  its  august  simplicity  it 
was  worth  seeing.  The  spirit  of  the  early  history  of  the 
United  States  seemed  to  reside  in  that  hemicycle;  and 
the  crape  on  the  vacated  and  peculiar  chair  added  its 
own  effect. 

My  first  notion  on  entering  the  former  Congress 
Chamber  was  that  I  was  in  presence  of  the  weirdest 
collection  of  ugly  statues  that  I  had  ever  beheld.  Which 
impression,  the  result  of  shock,  was  undoubtedly  false. 
On  reflection  I  am  convinced  that  those  statues  of  the 
worthies  of  the  different  States  are  not  more  ugly  than 
many  statues  I  could  point  to  in  no  matter  what  fane, 
museum,  or  palace  of  Europe.  Their  ugliness  is  only 
different  from  our  accustomed  European  ugliness.  The 
most  crudely  ugly  mural  decorations  in  the  world  are 
to  be  found  all  over  Italy — the  home  of  sublime  frescos. 
The  most  atrociously  debased  architecture  in  the  world 
is  to  be  found  in  France — the  home  of  sober  artistic 

52 


ON    PENNSYLVANIA    AVENUE 


THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER  SITES 

tradition.  Europe  is  simply  peppered  everywhere  with 
sculpture  whose  appalling  mediocrity  defies  competition. 
But  when  the  European  meets  ugly  sculpture  or  any 
ugly  form  of  art  in  the  New  World,  his  instinct  is  to 
exclaim,  "Of  course!"  His  instinct  is  to  exclaim,  "This 
beats  everything!"  The  attitude  will  not  bear  examina 
tion.  And  lo!  I  was  adopting  it  myself. 

"And  here's  Frances  Willard!"  cried,  ecstatically,  a 
young  woman  in  one  of  the  numerous  parties  of  ex 
cursionists  whose  more  deliberate  paths  through  the 
Capitol  we  were  continually  crossing  in  our  swift  course. 

And  while,  upon  the  spot  where  John  Quincy  Adams 
fell,  I  pretended  to  listen  to  the  guide,  who  was  proving 
to  me  from  a  distance  that  the  place  was  as  good  a 
whispering-gallery  as  any  in  Europe,  I  thought:  "And 
why  should  not  Frances  Willard's  statue  be  there?  I  am 
glad  it  is  there.  And  I  am  glad  to  see  these  groups  of 
provincials  admiring  with  open  mouths  the  statues  of 
the  makers  of  their  history,  though  the  statues  are 
chiefly  painful."  And  I  thought  also:  "New  York  may 
talk,  and  Chicago  may  talk,  and  Boston  may  talk,  but  it 
is  these  groups  of  provincials  who  are  the  real  America." 
They  were  extraordinarily  like  people  from  the  Five 
Towns — that  is  to  say,  extraordinarily  like  comfortable 
average  people  everywhere. 

We  were  outside  again,  under  one  of  the  enormous 
porticos  of  the  Capitol.  The  guide  was  receiving  his 
well-earned  dollar.  The  faithful  fellow  had  kept  nicely 
within  the  allotted  limit  of  half  an  hour. 

"Now  we'll  go  and  see  the  Congressional  Library," 
said  my  particular  friend. 

53' 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

But  I  would  not.  I  had  put  myself  in  a  position  to 
retort  to  any  sight-seeing  American  in  Europe  that  I 
had  seen  his  Capitol  in  thirty  minutes,  and  I  was  content. 
I  determined  to  rest  on  my  laurels.  Moreover,  I  had 
discovered  that  conventional  sight-seeing  is  a  very  ex 
hausting  form  of  activity.  I  would  visit  neither  the 
Library  of  Congress,  nor  the  Navy  Department,  nor  the 
Pension  Bureau,  nor  the  Dead-Letter  Museum,  nor  the 
Zoological  Park,  nor  the  White  House,  nor  the  National 
Museum,  nor  the  Lincoln  Museum,  nor  the  Smithsonian 
Institution,  nor  the  Treasury,  nor  any  other  of  the  great 
spectacles  of  Washington.  We  just  resumed  the  sea 
going  hack  and  drove  indolently  to  and  fro  in  avenues 
and  parks,  tasting  the  general  savor  of  the  city's  large 
pleasantness.  And  we  had  not  gone  far  before  we  got 
into  the  clutches  of  the  police. 

"I  don't  know  who  you  are,"  said  a  policeman,  as 
he  stopped  our  sea-going  hack.  "I  don't  know  who  you 
are,"  Pie  repeated,  cautiously,  as  one  accustomed  to 
policing  the  shahs  and  grand  viziers  of  the  earth,  "but 
it's  my  duty  to  tell  you  your  coachman  crossed  over  on 
the  wrong  side  of  the  lamp-post.  It's  not  allowed,  and 
he  knows  it  as  well  as  I  do." 

We  admitted  by  our  shamed  silence  that  we  had  no 
special  "pull"  in  Washington;  the  wise  negro  said  not  a 
word;  and  we  crept  away  from  the  policeman's  wrath, 
and  before  I  knew  it  we  were  up  against  the  Washington 
Monument — one  of  those  national  calamities  which 
ultimately  happen  to  every  country,  and  of  which  the 
supreme  example  is,  of  course,  the  Albert  Memorial  in 
Kensington  Gardens. 

54 


ON   THE    STEPS    OF   THE    PORTICO — THE   CAPITOL 


THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER   SITES 

When  I  drove  into  the  magnificent  railway  station  late 
that  night — true  American  rain  was  descending  in  sheets 
— I  was  carrying  away  with  me  an  impression,  as  it  were, 
of  a  gigantic  plantation  of  public  edifices  in  a  loose  tangle 
and  undergrowth  of  thoroughfares :  which  seemed  proper 
for  a  legislative  and  administrative  metropolis.  I  was 
amused  to  reflect  how  the  city,  like  most  cities,  had 
extended  in  precisely  the  direction  in  which  its  founders 
had  never  imagined  it  would  extend ;  and  naturally  I  was 
astonished  by  the  rapidity  of  its  development.  (One 
of  my  friends,  who  was  not  old,  had  potted  wild  game 
in  a  marsh  that  is  now  a  park  close  to  the  Capitol.) 
I  thought  that  the  noble  wings  of  the  Capitol  were 
architecturally  much  superior  to  the  central  portion 
of  it.  I  remembered  a  dazzling  glimpse  of  the  White 
House  as  a  distinguished  little  building.  I  feared  that 
ere  my  next  visit  the  indefatigable  energy  of  America 
would  have  rebuilt  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  especially  the 
higgledy-piggledy  and  picturesque  and  untidy  portion 
of  it  that  lies  nearest  to  the  Capitol,  and  I  hoped  that 
in  doing  so  the  architects  would  at  any  rate  not  carry 
the  cornice  to  such  excess  as  it  has  been  carried  in  other 
parts  of  the  town.  And,  finally,  I  was  slightly  scared 
by  the  prevalence  of  negroes.  It  seemed  to  me  as  if 
in  Washington  I  had  touched  the  fringe  of  the  negro 

problem. 

• 

It  was  in  a  different  and  a  humbler  spirit  that  I  went 
to  Boston.  I  had  received  more  warnings  and  more 
advice  about  Boston  than  about  all  the  other  cities  put 
together.  And,  in  particular,  the  greatest  care  had  been 

55 


tYOUR    UNITED    STATES 

taken  to  permeate  my  whole  being  with  the  idea  that 
Boston  was  "different."  In  some  ways  it  proved  so  to 
be.  One  difference  forced  itself  upon  me  immediately 
I  left  the  station  for  the  streets — the  quaint,  original 
odor  of  the  taxis.  When  I  got  to  the  entirely  admirable 
hotel  I  found  a  book  in  a  prominent  situation  on  the 
writing-table  in  my  room.  In  many  hotels  this  book 
would  have  been  the  Bible.  But  here  it  was  the  cata 
logue  of  the  hotel  library ;  it  ran  to  a  hundred  and  eighty- 
two  pages.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  no  bar  in  the 
hotel,  and  no  smoking-room.  I  make  no  comments;  I 
draw  no  conclusions;  I  state  the  facts. 

The  warnings  continued  after  my  arrival.  I  was  in 
formed  by  I  don't  know  how  many  persons  that  Boston 
was  "a  circular  city,"  with  a  topography  calculated  to 
puzzle  the  simple.  This  was  true.  I  usually  go  about 
in  strange  places  with  a  map,  but  I  found  the  map  of 
Boston  even  more  complex  than  the  city  it  sought  to 
explain.  If  I  did  not  lose  myself,  it  was  because  I  never 
trusted  myself  alone;  other  people  lost  me. 

Within  an  hour  or  so  I  had  been  familiarized  by 
Bostonians  with  a  whole  series  of  apparently  stock 
jokes  concerning  and  against  Boston,  such  as  that  one 
hinging  on  the  phrase  "cold  roast  Boston,"  and  that 
other  one  about  the  best  thing  in  Boston  being  the  five 
o'clock  train  to  New  York  (I  do  not  vouch  for  the  hour 
of  departure).  Even  in  Cambridge,  a  less  jocular  place, 
a  joke  seemed  to  be  immanent,  to  the  effect  that  though 
you  could  always  tell  a  Harvard  man,  you  could  not  tell 
him  much. 

Matters  more  serious  awaited  me.     An  old  resident 

56 


UNDER   THE    GREAT   DOME    OF   THE    CAPITOL 


THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER   SITES 

of  Boston  took  me  out  for  privacy  onto  the  Common  and 
whispered  in  my  ear:  "This  is  the  most  snobbish  city 
in  the  whole  world.  There  is  no  real  democracy  here. 
The  first  thing  people  do  when  they  get  to  'know  you  is 
to  show  you  their  family  tree  and  prove  that  they  came 
over  in  the  Mayflower."  And  so  he  ran  on,  cursing 
Boston  up  hill  and  down  dale.  Nevertheless,  he  w^as 
very  proud  of  his  Boston.  Had  I  agreed  with  the  con 
demnation,  he  might  have  thrown  me  into  the  artificial 
brook.  Another  great  Bostonian  expert,  after  leading 
me  on  to  admit  that  I  had  come  in  order  to  try  to  learn 
the  real  Boston,  turned  upon  me  with  ferocious  gaiety, 
thus:  "You  will  not  learn  the  real  Boston.  You  cannot. 
The  real  Boston  is  the  old  Back  Bay  folk,  who  gravitate 
eternally  between  Beacon  Street  and  State  Street  and  the 
Somerset  Club,  and  never  go  beyond.  They  confuse 
New  England  with  the  created  universe,  and  it  is  im 
possible  that  you  should  learn  them.  Nobody  could 
learn  them  in  less  than  twenty  years'  intense  study  and 
research." 

Cautioned,  and  even  intimidated,  I  thought  it  would 
be  safest  just  to  take  Boston  as  Boston  came,  respect 
fully  but  casually.  And  as  the  hospitality  of  Boston 
was  prodigious,  splendid,  unintermittent,  and  most  de 
lightfully  unaffected,  I  had  no  difficulty  whatever  in 
taking  Boston  as  she  came.  And  my  impressions  began 
to  emerge,  one  after  another,  from  the  rich  and  cloudy 
confusion  of  novel  sensations. 

What  primarily  differentiates  Boston  from  all  the 
other  cities  I  saw  is  this :  It  is  finished ;  I  mean  complete. 
Of  the  other  cities,  while  admitting  their  actual  achieve- 

57 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

ment,  one  would  say,  and  their  own  citizens  invariably 
do  say,  "They  will  be  .  .  ."     Boston  is. 

Another  leading  impression,  which  remains  with  me, 
is  that  Boston  is  not  so  English  as  it  perhaps  imagines 
itself  to  be.  An  interviewer  (among  many)  came  to 
see  me  about  Boston,  and  he  came  with  the  fixed  and  sole 
notion  in  his  head  that  Boston  was  English.  He  would 
have  it  that  Boston  was  English.  Worn  down  by  his 
persistency,  I  did,  as  a  fact,  admit  in  one  obscure  cor 
ner  of  the  interview  that  Boston  had  certain  English 
characteristics.  The  scare-head  editor  of  the  interview 
ing  paper,  looking  through  his  man's  copy  for  suitable 
prey,  came  across  my  admission.  It  was  just  what  he 
wanted ;  it  was  what  he  was  thirsting  for.  In  an  instant 
the  scare-head  was  created:  "Boston  as  English  as  a 
muffin!"  An  ideal  scare-head!  That  I  had  never  used 
the  word  "muffin"  or  any  such  phrase  was  a  detail  ex 
quisitely  unimportant.  The  scare-head  was  immense. 
It  traveled  in  fine  large  type  across  the  continent.  I  met 
it  for  weeks  afterward  in  my  press-cuttings,  and  I  doubt 
if  Boston  was  altogether  delighted  with  the  comparison. 
I  will  not  deny  that  Boston  is  less  strikingly  un-English 
than  sundry  other  cities.  I  will  not  deny  that  I  met  men 
in  Boston  of  a  somewhat  pronounced  English  type.  I 
will  not  deny  that  in  certain  respects  old  Kensington 
reminds  me  of  a  street  here  and  there  in  Boston — such 
as  Mount  Vernon  Street  or  Chestnut  Street.  But  I  do 
maintain  that  the  Englishness  of  Boston  has  been  seri 
ously  exaggerated. 

And  still  another  very  striking  memory  of  Boston — 
indeed,  perhaps,  the  paramount  impression! — is  that  it 

58 


THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER   SITES 

contains  the  loveliest  modern  thing  I  saw  in  America — 
namely,  the  Puvis  de  Chavannes  wall-paintings  on  the 
grand  staircase  of  the  Public  Library.  The  Library  itself 
is  a  beautiful  building,  but  it  holds  something  more 
beautiful.  Never  shall  I  forget  my  agitation  on  behold 
ing  these  unsurpassed  works  of  art,  which  alone  would 
suffice  to  make  Boston  a  place  of  pilgrimage. 

When  afterward  I  went  back  to  Paris,  the  painters' 
first  question  was:  "Et  les  Puvis  a  Boston — VOMS  les  avez 
vusf  Qu'est-ce  que  vous  en  ditesT"1 

It  was  very  un-English  on  the  part  of  Boston  to  com 
mission  these  austere  and  classical  works.  England 
would  never  have  done  it.  The  nationality  of  the 
greatest  decorative  painter  of  modern  times  would  have 
offended  her  sense  of  fitness.  What — a  French  painter 
officially  employed  on  an  English  public  building? 
Unthinkable !  England  would  have  insisted  on  an  Eng 
lish  painter — or,  at  worst,  an  American.  It  is  strange 
that  a  community  which  had  the  wit  to  honor  itself 
by  employing  Puvis  de  Chavannes  should  be  equally 
enthusiastic  about  the  frigid  theatricalities  of  an  E.  A. 
Abbey  or  the  forbidding  and  opaque  intricate  dexterity 
of  a  John  Sargent  in  the  same  building.  Or,  rather,  it  is 
not  strange,  for  these  contradictions  are  discoverable 
everywhere  in  the  patronage  of  the  arts. 

It  was  from  the  Public  Library  that  some  friends  and 
I  set  out  on  a  little  tour  of  Boston.  Whether  we  went 
north,  south,  east,  or  west  I  cannot  tell,  for  this  was  one 
of  the  few  occasions  when  the  extreme  variousness  of  a 
city  has  deprived  me  definitely  of  a  sense  of  direction; 
but  I  know  that  we  drove  many  miles  through  magnifi- 

59 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

cent  fenny  parks,  whose  roads  were  reserved  to  pleasure, 
and  that  at  length,  after  glimpsing  famous  houses  and 
much  of  the  less  centralized  wealth  and  ease  of  Boston, 
we  came  out  upon  the  shores  of  the  old  harbor,  and  went 
into  a  yacht-club-house  with  a  glorious  prospect.  Boston 
has  more  book-shops  to  the  acre  than  any  city  within 
my  knowledge  except  Aberdeen  (not  North  Carolina, 
but  Scotland).  Its  book-shops,  however,  are  as  naught 
to  its  yacht  clubs.  And  for  one  yacht  club  I  personally 
would  sacrifice  many  book-shops.  It  was  an  exciting 
moment  in  my  life  when,  after  further  wandering  on  and 
off  coast  roads,  and  through  curving,  cobbled,  rackety 
streets,  and  between  thunderous  tram-cars  and  under 
deafening  elevated  lines,  I  was  permitted  to  enter  the 
celestial  and  calm  precincts  of  the  Boston  Yacht  Club 
itself,  which  overlooks  another  harbor.  The  acute  and 
splendid  nauticality  of  this  club,  all  fashioned  out  of  an 
old  warehouse,  stamps  Boston  as  a  city  which  has  com 
prehended  the  sea.  I  saw  there  the  very  wheel  of  the 
Spray,  the  cockboat  in  which  the  regretted  Slocum 
wafted  himself  round  the  world!  I  sat  in  an  arm-chair 
which  would  have  suited  Falstaff,  and  whose  tabular 
arms  would  have  held  all  FalstafFs  tankards,  and  gazed 
through  a  magnified  port -hole  at  a  six-masted  schooner 
as  it  crossed  the  field  of  vision!  And  I  had  never  even 
dreamed  that  a  six-masted  schooner  existed!  It  was 
with  difficulty  that  I  left  the  Boston  Yacht  Club.  In 
deed,  I  would  only  leave  it  in  order  to  go  and  see  the 
frigate  Constitution,  the  ship  which  was  never  defeated, 
and  which  assuredly,  after  over  a  hundred  and  ten  years 
of  buoyant  life,  remains  the  most  truly  English  thing 

60 


THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER  SITES 

in  Boston.     The  afternoon  teas  of  Boston  are  far  less  * 
English  than  that  grim  and  majestic  craft. 

We  passed  into  the  romantic  part  of  Boston,  skirting  * 
vast  wool-warehouses  and  other  enormous  establish 
ments  bearing  such  Oriental  signs  as  "Coffee  and  Spices." 
And  so  into  a  bewildering  congeries  of  crowded  streets, 
where  every  name  on  the  walls  seemed  to  be  Italian, 
and  where  every  corner  was  dangerous  with  vegetable- 
barrows,  tram-cars,  and  perambulators;  through  this 
quarter  the  legend  of  Paul  Revere  seemed  to  float  like 
a  long  wisp  of  vapor.  And  then  I  saw  the  Christopher 
Wren  spire  of  Paul  Revere 's  signal-church,  closed  now — 
but  whether  because  the  congregation  had  dwindled  to 
six  or  for  some  more  recondite  reason  I  am  not  clear. 
And  then  I  beheld  the  delightful,  elegant  fabric  of  the 
old  State  House,  with  the  memories  of  massacre  round 
about  it,  and  the  singular  spectacle  of  the  Lion  and  the 
Unicorn  on  its  roof.  Too  proudly  negligent  had  Boston 
been  to  remove  those  symbols! 

And  finally  we  rolled  into  the  central  and  most  cir 
cular  shopping  quarter,  as  different  from  the  Italian 
quarter  as  the  Italian  quarter  was  different  from  Copley 
Square;  and  its  heart  was  occupied  by  a  graveyard. 
And  here  I  had  to  rest. 

The  second  portion  of  the  itinerary  began  with  the 
domed  State  Capitol,  an  impressive  sight,  despite  its 
strange  coloring,  and  despite  its  curious  habit  of  illu 
minating  itself  at  dark,  as  if  in  competition  with  such 
establishments  as  the  "Bijou  Dream,"  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  Common.  Here  I  first  set  eyes  on  Beacon 
Street,  familiar — indeed,  classic — to  the  European  stu- 

61 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

dent  of  American  literature.  Commonwealth  Avenue,  I 
have  to  confess,  I  had  never  heard  of  till  I  saw  it.  These 
interminable  and  gorgeous  thoroughfares,  where  each 
massive  abode  is  a  costly  and  ceremonial  organization 
of  the  most  polished  and  civilized  existence,  leave  the 
simple  European  speechless — especially  when  he  re 
members  the  swampy  origin  of  the  main  part  of  the 
ground.  .  .  .  The  inscrutable,  the  unknowable  Back  Bay ! 

Here,  indeed,  is  evidence  of  a  society  in  equilibrium, 
and  therefore  of  a  society  which  will  receive  genuinely 
new  ideas  with  an  extreme,  if  polite,  caution,  while 
welcoming  with  warm  suavity  old  ideas  that  disguise 
themselves  as  novelties! 

It  was  a  tremendous  feat  to  reclaim  from  ooze  the 
foundation  of  Back  Bay.  Such  feats  are  not  accom 
plished  in  Europe;  they  are  not  even  imaginatively  con 
ceived  there.  And  now  that  the  great  business  .is 
achieved,  the  energy  that  did  it,  restless  and  unoccupied, 
is  seeking  another  field.  I  was  informed  that  Boston 
is  dreaming  of  the  construction  of  an  artificial  island 
in  the  midst  of  the  river  Charles,  with  the  hugest  cathe 
dral  in  the  world  thereon,  and  the  most  gorgeous  bridges 
that  ever  spanned  a  fine  stream.  With  proper  deference, 
it  is  to  be  hoped  that  Boston,  forgetting  this  infelicitous 
caprice,  will  remember  in  time  that  she  alone  among 
the  great  cities  of  America  is  complete.  A  project  that 
would  consort  well  with  the  genius  of  Chicago  might 
disserve  Boston  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  esteem  a  sense 
of  fitness  to  be  among  the  major  qualifications  for  the 
true  art  of  life.  And,  in  the  matter  of  the  art  of  daily 
living,  Boston  as  she  is  has  a  great  deal  to  teach  to  the 

62 


THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER   SITES 

rest  of  the  country,  and  little  to  learn.  Such  is  the 
diffident  view  of  a  stranger. 

• 

/\  Cambridge  is  separated  from  Boston  by  the  river 
Charles  and  by  piquant  jealousies  that  tickle  no  one  more 
humorously  than  those  whom,  theoretically,  they  stab. 
From  the  east  bank  Cambridge  is  academic,  and  there 
fore  negligible;  from  the  west,  Boston  dwindles  to  a  mere 
quay  where  one  embarks  for  Europe. 

What  struck  me  first  about  Cambridge  was  that  it 
must  be  the  only  city  of  its  size  and  amenity  in  the  United 
States  without  an  imposing  hotel.  It  is  difficult  to 
imagine  any  city  in  the  United  States  minus  at  least  two 
imposing  hotels,  with  a  barber's  shop  in  the  basement  and 
a  world's  fair  in  the  hall.  But  one  soon  perceives  that 
Cambridge  is  a  city  apart.  In  visual  characteristics  it 
must  have  changed  very  little,  and  it  will  never  change 
with  facility.  Boston  is  pre-eminently  a  town  of  tradi 
tions,  but  the  traditions  have  to  be  looked  for.  Cam 
bridge  is  equally  a  town  of  traditions,  but  the  traditions 
stare  you  in  the  face. 

My  first  halt  was  in  front  of  the  conspicuous  home  of 
James  Russell  Lowell.  Now  in  the  far  recesses  of  the 
Five  Towns  I  was  brought  up  on  "My  Study  Windows." 
My  father,  who  would  never  accept  the  authority  of  an 
encyclopedia  when  his  children  got  him  in  a  corner  on 
some  debated  question  of  fact,  held  James  Russell 
Lowell  as  the  supreme  judge  of  letters,  from  whom  not 
even  he  could  appeal.  (It  is  true,  he  had  never  heard 
of  Ste.  Beuve,  and  regarded  Matthew  Arnold  as  a  modern 
fad.)  And  there  were  the  study  windows  of  James 

63 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

Russell  Lowell !  And  his  house  in  its  garden  was  only  one 
of  hundreds  of  similar  houses  standing  in  like  old  gardens. 
It  was  highly  agreeable  to  learn  that  some  of  the  pre- 
Revolution  houses  had  not  yet  left  the  occupation  of 
the  families  which  built  them.  Beautiful  houses,  a 
few  of  them,  utterly  dissimilar  from  anything  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic!  Did  not  William  Morris 
always  maintain  that  wood  was  and  forever  would  be  the 
most  suitable  material  for  building  a  house?  On  the 
side  of  the  railroad  track  near  Toledo  I  saw  frame  houses, 
whose  architecture  is  debased  from  this  Cambridge 
architecture,  blown  clean  over  by  the  gale.  But  the 
gale  that  will  deracinate  Cambridge  has  not  yet  begun 
to  rage.  ...  I  rejoiced  to  see  the  house  of  Longfellow. 
In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  wrote  "The  Wreck  of  the 
Hesperus,"  he  seems  to  keep  his  position  as  the  chief 
minor  poet  of  the  English  language.  And  the  most 
American  and  the  most  wistful  thing  in  Cambridge 
was  that  the  children  of  Cambridge  had  been  guided  to 
buy  and  make  inalienable  the  land  in  front  of  his  house, 
so  that  his  descendant  might  securely  enjoy  the  free 
prospect  that  Longfellow  enjoyed.  In  what  other  coun 
try  would  just  such  a  delicate,  sentimental  homage  have 
been  paid  in  just  such  an  ingeniously  fanciful  manner?1 

1This  story  was  related  to  me  by  a  resident  of  Cambridge.  Mr. 
Richard  H.  Dana,  Longfellow's  son-in-law,  has  since  informed  me  that  it 
is  quite  untrue.  I  regret  that  it  is  quite  untrue.  It  ought  to  have  been 
quite  true.  The  land  in  question  was  given  by  Longfellow's  children  to 
the  Longfellow  Memorial  Association,  who  gave  it  to  the  city  of  Cam 
bridge.  The  general  children  of  Cambridge  did  give  to  Longfellow  an 
arm-chair  made  from  the  wood  of  a  certain  historic  "spreading  chestnut- 
tree,"  under  which  stood  a  certain  historic  village  smithy;  and  with  this 
I  suppose  I  must  be  content. — A.  B. 

64 


THE    BOSTON   YACHT   CLUB — OVERLOOKING   THE    HARBOR 


THE   CAPITOL  AND  OTHER   SITES 

After  I  had  passed  the  Longfellow  house  it  began  to 
rain,  and  dusk  began  to  gather  in  the  recesses  between 
the  houses;  and  my  memory  is  that,  with  an  athletic 
and  tireless  companion,  I  walked  uncounted  leagues 
through  endless  avenues  of  Cambridge  homes  toward 
a  promised  club  that  seemed  ever  to  retreat  before  us 
with  the  shyness  of  a  fawn.  However,  we  did  at  length 
capture  it.  This  club  was  connected  with  Harvard, 
and  I  do  not  propose  to  speak  of  Harvard  in  the  present 

chapter. 

« 

The  typical  Cambridge  house  as  I  saw  it  persists  in  my 
recollection  as  being  among  the  most  characteristic  and 
comfortable  of  "real"  American  phenomena.  And  one 
reason  why  I  insisted,  in  a  previous  chapter,  on  the  special 
Americanism  of  Indianapolis  is  that  Indianapolis  is  full 
of  a  modified  variety  of  these  houses  which  is  even  more 
characteristically  American — to  my  mind — than  the 
Cambridge  style  itself.  Indianapolis  being  by  general 
consent  the  present  chief  center  of  letters  in  the  United 
States,  it  is  not  surprising  that  I,  an  author,  knew  more 
people  from  Indianapolis  than  from  any  other  city. 
Indeed,  I  went  to  Indianapolis  simply  because  I  had  old 
friends  there,  and  not  at  all  in  the  hope  of  inspecting 
a  city  characteristically  American.  It  was  quite  start- 
lingly  different  from  the  mental  picture  I  had  formed 
of  it. 

I  think  that  in  order  to  savor  Indianapolis  properly 
one  should  approach  it  as  I  approached  it — in  an  ac 
commodation-train  on  a  single  track,  a  train  with  a 
happy-go-lucky  but  still  agreeable  service  in  its  res- 
5  65 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

taurant-car,  a  train  that  halts  at  every  barn-door  in  the 
vast  flat,  featureless  fields  of  yellow  stubble,  rolling  some 
times  over  a  muddy,  brown  river,  and  skirting  now  and 
then  a  welcome  wooded  cleft  in  the  monotony  of  the 
landscape.  The  scenes  at  those  barn-doors  were  full 
of  the  picturesque  and  of  the  racy.  A  farmer  with  a  gun 
and  a  brace  of  rabbits  and  a  dog  leaping  up  at  them, 
while  two  young  women  talked  to  or  at  the  farmer  from 
a  distance;  a  fat  little  German  girl  in  a  Scotch  frock, 
cleaning  outside  windows  with  the  absorbed  serious 
ness  of  a  grandmother;  a  group  of  boys  dividing  their 
attention  between  her  and  the  train;  an  old  woman 
driving  a  cart,  and  a  negro  gesticulating  and  running 
after  the  cart;  and  all  of  them,  save  the  nigger,  wearing 
gloves — presumably  as  a  protection  against  the  strong 
wind  that  swept  through  the  stubble  and  shook  the 
houses  and  the  few  trees.  Those  houses,  in  all  their 
summariness  and  primitive  crudity,  yet  reminded  one  of 
the  Cambridge  homes;  they  exhibited  some  remains  of 
the  pre-Revolution  style. 

And  then  you  come  to  the  inevitable  State  Fair 
grounds,  and  the  environs  of  the  city  which  is  the  capital 
and  heart  of  all  those  plains. 

And  after  you  have  got  away  from  the  railroad 
station  and  the  imposing  hotels  and  the  public  monu 
ments  and  the  high  central  buildings — an  affair  of  five 
minutes  in  an  automobile — you  discover  yourself  in 
long,  calm  streets  of  essential  America.  These  streets 
are  rectangular;  the  streets  of  Cambridge  abhor  the 
straight  line.  They  are  full  everywhere  of  maple-trees. 
And  on  either  side  they  are  bordered  with  homes — each 

66 


THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER   SITES 

house  detached,  each  house  in  its  own  fairly  spacious 
garden,  each  house  individual  and  different  from  all  the 
rest.  Few  of  the  houses  are  large;  on  the  other  hand, 
none  of  them  is  small:  this  is  the  region  of  the  solid 
middle  class,  the  class  which  loves  comfort  and  piques 
itself  on  its  amenities,  but  is  a  little  ashamed  or  too 
timid  to  be  luxurious. 

Architecturally  the  houses  represent  a  declension 
from  the  purity  of  earlier  Cambridge.  Scarcely  one  is 
really  beautiful.  The  style  is  debased.  But  then,  it 
possesses  the  advantage  of  being  modernized;  it  has  not 
the  air  of  having  strayed  by  accident  into  the  wrong  cen 
tury.  And,  moreover,  it  is  saved  from  condemnation 
by  its  sobriety  and  by  its  honest  workmanship.  It  is 
the  expression  of  a  race  incapable  of  looking  foolish,  of 
being  giddy,  of  running  to  extremes.  It  is  the  expression 
of  a  race  that  both  clung  to  the  past  and  reached  out  to 
the  future;  that  knew  how  to  make  the  best  of  both 
worlds;  that  keenly  realized  the  value  of  security  be 
cause  it  had  been  through  insecurity.  You  can  see  that 
all  these  houses  were  built  by  people  who  loved  "a  bit 
of  property,"  and  to  whom  a  safe  and  dignified  roof  was 
the  final  ambition  achieved.  Why!  I  do  believe  that 
there  are  men  and  women  behind  some  of  those  curtains 
to  this  day  who  haven't  quite  realized  that  the  Indians 
aren't  coming  any  more,  and  that  there  is  permanently 
enough  wood  in  the  pile,  and  that  quinine  need  no  longer 
figure  in  the  store  cupboard  as  a  staple  article  of  diet! 
I  do  believe  that  there  are  minor  millionaires  in  some  of 
those  drawing-rooms  who  wonder  whether,  out-soaring 
the  ambition  of  a  bit  of  property,  they  would  be  justified 

67 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

in  creeping  down-town  and  buying  a  cheap  automobile! 
.  .  .  These  are  the  people  who  make  the  link  between 
the  academic  traditionalism  of  Cambridge  and  such  ex 
cessively  modern  products  of  evolution  as  their  own 
mayor,  Mr.  Shanks,  protector  of  the  poor.  They  are 
not  above  forming  deputations  to  parley  with  their  own 
mayor.  ...  I  loved  them.  Their  drawing-rooms  were 
full  of  old  silver,  and  book-gossip,  and  Victorian  ladies 
apparently  transported  direct  from  the  more  aristocratic 
parts  of  the  Five  Towns,  who  sat  behind  trays  and 
poured  out  tea  from  the  identical  tea-pot  that  my  grand 
mother  used  to  keep  in  a  green  bag. 

In  the  outer  suburbs  of  the  very  largest  cities  I  saw 
revulsions  against  the  wholesale  barracky  conveniences 
of  the  apartment -house,  in  the  shape  of  little  colonies 
of  homes,  consciously  but  superficially  imitating  the 
Cambridge-Indianapolis  tradition — with  streets  far  more 
curvily  winding  than  the  streets  of  Cambridge,  and 
sidewalks  of  a  strip  of  concrete  between  green  turf- 
bands  that  recalled  the  original  sidewalks  of  Indianap 
olis  and  even  of  the  rural  communities  around  In 
dianapolis.  Cozy  homes,  each  in  its  own  garden,  with 
its  own  clothes-drier,  and  each  different  from  all  the 
rest!  Homes  that  the  speculative  builder,  recking  not 
of  the  artistic  sobriety,  had  determined  should  be  pic 
turesque  at  any  cost  of  capricious  ingenuity!  And  not 
secure  homes,  because,  though  they  were  occupied  by 
their  owners,  their  owners  had  not  built  them — had  only 
bought  them,  and  would  sell  them  as  casually  as  they 
had  bought.  The  apartment-house  will  probably  prove 
stronger  than  these  throwbacks.  And  yet  the  time 

68 


THE  CAPITOL  AND  OTHER   SITES 

will  come  when  even  the  apartment -house  will  be  re 
garded  as  a  picturesque  survival.  Into  what  novel 
architecture  and  organization  of  living  it  will  survive  I 
should  not  care  to  prophesy,  but  I  am  convinced  that 
the  future  will  be  quite  as  interestingly  human  as  the 
present  is,  and  as  the  past  was. 


IV 
SOME    ORGANIZATIONS 


IV 

SOME   ORGANIZATIONS 

WHAT  strikes  and  frightens  the  backward  European 
as  much  as  anything  in  the  United  States  is  the 
efficiency   and   fearful   universality   of   the   telephone. 
Just  as  I  think  of  the  big  cities  as  agglomerations  pierced 
everywhere  by  elevator-shafts  full  of  movement,  so  I 
think  of  them  as  being  threaded,  under  pavements  and 
over  roofs  and  between  floors  and  ceilings  and  between 
walls,  by  millions  upon  millions  of  live  filaments  that 
unite  all  the  privacies  of  the  organism — and  destroy 
them  in  order  to  make  one  immense  publicity!     I  do 
not  mean  that  Europe  has  failed  to  adopt  the  telephone, 
nor  that  in  Europe  there  are  no  hotels  with  the  dreadful 
curse  of  an  active  telephone  in  every  room.     But  I  do 
mean  that  the  European  telephone  is  a  toy,  and  a  some 
what  clumsy  one,  compared  with  the  inexorable  serious 
ness  of  the  American  telephone.     Many  otherwise  highly 
civilized  Europeans  are  as  timid  in  addressing  a  tele 
phone  as  they  would  be  in  addressing  a  royal  sovereign. 
|  The  average   European  middle-class   householder  still 
\  speaks  of  his  telephone,   if  he  has   one,   in  the  same 
falsely  casual  tone  as  the  corresponding  American  is 
liable  to  speak  of  his  motor-car.     It  is  naught — a  negli 
gible  trifle — but  somehow  it  comes  into  the  conversation ! 
"How  odd!"  you  exclaim.     And  you  are  right.     It  is 

73 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

we  Europeans  who  are  wrong,  through  no  particular 
fault  of  our  own. 

The  American  is  ruthlessly  logical  about  the  tele 
phone.  The  only  occasion  on  which  I  was  in  really 
serious  danger  of  being  taken  for  a  madman  in  the 
United  States  was  when,  in  a  Chicago  hotel,  I  permanent 
ly  removed  the  receiver  from  the  telephone  in  a  room 
designed  (doubtless  ironically)  for  slumber.  The  whole 
hotel  was  appalled.  Half  Chicago  shuddered.  In  re 
sponse  to  the  prayer  of  a  deputation  from  the  manage 
ment  I  restored  the  receiver.  On  the  horrified  face  of 
the  deputation  I  could  read  the  unspoken  query:  "Is 
it  conceivable  that  you  have  been  in  this  country  a 
month  without  understanding  that  the  United  States  is 
primarily  nothing  but  a  vast  congeries  of  telephone- 
cabins?"  Yes,  I  yielded  and  admired!  And  I  surmise 
that  on  my  next  visit  I  shall  find  a  telephone  on  every 
table  of  every  restaurant  that  respects  itself. 

It  is  the  efficiency  of  the  telephone  that  makes  it 
irresistible  to  a  great  people  whose  passion  is  to  "get 
results" — the  instancy  with  which  the  communication 
is  given,  and  the  clear  loudness  of  the  telephone's  voice 
in  reply  to  yours :  phenomena  utterly  unknown  in  Europe. 
Were  I  to  inhabit  the  United  States,  I  too  should  become 
a  victim  of  the  telephone  habit,  as  it  is  practised  in  its 
most  advanced  form  in  those  suburban  communities 
to  which  I  have  already  incidentally  referred  at  the  end 
of  the  previous  chapter.  There  a  woman  takes  to  the 
telephone  as  women  in  more  decadent  lands  take  to 
morphia.  You  can  see  her  at  morn  at  her  bedroom 
window,  pouring  confidences  into  her  telephone,  thus 

74 


AT   MORN    POURING   CONFIDENCES   INTO   HER   TELEPHONE 


SOME   ORGANIZATIONS 

combining  the  joy  of  an  innocent  vice  with  the  healthy 
freshness  of  breeze  and  sunshine.  It  has  happened  to 
me  to  sit  in  a  drawing-room,  where  people  gathered  round 
the  telephone  as  Europeans  gather  round  a  fire,  and  to 
hear  immediately  after  the  ejaculation  of  a  number  into 
the  telephone  a  sharp  ring  from  outside  through  the  open 
window,  and  then  to  hear  in  answer  to  the  question, 
"What  are  you  going  to  wear  to-night?"  two  absolutely 
simultaneous  replies,  one  loudly  from  the  telephone 
across  the  room,  and  the  other  f aintlier  from  a  charming 
human  voice  across  the  garden:  "I  don't  know.  What 
are  you?"  Such  may  be  the  pleasing  secondary  scien 
tific  effect  of  telephoning  to  the  lady  next  door  on  a 
warm  afternoon. 

Now  it  was  obvious  that  behind  the  apparently  simple 
exterior  aspects  of  any  telephone  system  there  must  be 
an  intricate  and  marvelous  secret  organization.  In  Eu 
rope  my  curiosity  would  probably  never  have  been  ex 
cited  by  the  thought  of  that  organization — at  home  one 
accepts  everything  as  of  course! — but,  in  the  United 
States,  partly  because  the  telephone  is  so  much  more 
wonderful  and  terrible  there,  and  partly  because  in  a 
foreign  land  one  is  apt  to  have  strange  caprices,  I  allowed 
myself  to  become  the  prey  of  a  desire  to  see  the  arcanum 
concealed  at  the  other  end  of  all  the  wires;  and  thus, 
one  day,  under  the  high  protection  of  a  demigod  of  the 
electrical  world,  I  paid  a  visit  to  a  telephone-exchange 
in  New  York,  and  saw  therein  what  nine  hundred  and 
ninety-nine  out  of  every  thousand  of  the  most  ardent 
telephone-users  seldom  think  about  and  will  never  see. 

A  murmuring  sound,  as  of  an  infinity  of  scholars  in  a 

75 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

prim  school  conning  their  lessons,  and  a  long  row  of 
young  women  seated  in  a  dim  radiance  on  a  long  row  of 
precisely  similar  stools,  before  a  long  apparatus  of  holes 
and  pegs  and  pieces  of  elastic  cord,  all  extremely  intent : 
that  was  the  first  broad  impression.  One  saw  at  once 
that  none  of  these  young  women  had  a  single  moment 
to  spare;  they  were  all  involved  in  the  tremendous 
machine,  part  of  it,  keeping  pace  with  it  and  in  it,  and 
not  daring  to  take  their  eyes  off  it  for  an  instant,  lest 
they  should  sin  against  it.  What  they  were  droning 
about  it  was  impossible  to  guess;  for  if  one  stationed  one 
self  close  to  any  particular  rapt  young  woman,  she  seemed 
to  utter  no  sound,  but  simply  and  without  ceasing  to  peg 
and  unpeg  holes  at  random  among  the  thousands  of 
holes  before  her,  apparently  in  obedience  to  the  signaling 
of  faint,  tiny  lights  that  in  thousands  continually  ex 
pired  and  were  rekindled.  (It  was  so  that  these  tiny 
lights  should  be  distinguishable  that  the  illumination 
of  the  secret  and  finely  appointed  chamber  was  kept 
dim.)  Throughout  the  whole  length  of  the  apparatus 
the  colored  elastic  cords  to  which  the  pegs  were  attached 
kept  crossing  one  another  in  fantastic  patterns. 

We  who  had  entered  were  ignored.  We  might  have 
been  ghosts,  invisible  and  inaudible.  Even  the  super 
visors,  less-young  women  set  in  authority,  did  not  turn 
to  glance  at  us  as  they  moved  restlessly  peering  behind 
the  stools.  And  yet  somehow  I  could  hear  the  delicate 
shoulders  of  all  the  young  women  saying,  without 
speech:  "Here  come  these  tyrants  and  taskmasters 
again,  who  have  invented  this  exercise  which  nearly  but 
not  quite  cracks  our  little  brains  for  us!  They  know 

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exactly  how  much  they  can  get  out  of  us,  and  they  get 
it.  They  are  cleverer  than  us  and  more  powerful  than 
us;  and  we  have  to  submit  to  their  discipline.  But— 
And  afar  off  I  could  hear:  "What  are  you  going  to  wear 
to-night?"  "Will  you  dine  with  me  to-night?"  "I 
want  two  seats."  "Very  well,  thanks,  and  how  is  Mrs. 
.  .  .  ?"  "When  can  I  see  you  to-morrow?"  "I'll  take 
your  offer  for  those  bonds."  .  .  .  And  I  could  see  the  in 
teriors  of  innumerable  offices  and  drawing-rooms.  .  .  . 
But  of  course  I  could  hear  and  see  nothing  really  except 
the  intent  drone  and  quick  gesturing  of  those  completely 
absorbed  young  creatures  in  the  dim  radiance,  on  stools 
precisely  similar. 

I  understood  why  the  telephone  service  was  so  efficient. 
I  understood  not  merely  from  the  demeanor  of  the  long 
row  of  young  women,  but  from  everything  else  I  had 
seen  in  the  exact  and  diabolically  ingenious  ordering  of 
the  whole  establishment. 

We  were  silent  for  a  time,  as  though  we  had  entered 
a  church.  We  were,  perhaps  unconsciously,  abashed 
by  the  intensity  of  the  absorption  of  these  neat  young 
women.  After  a  while  one  of  the  guides,  one  of  the 
inscrutable  beings  who  had  helped  to  invent  and  con 
struct  the  astounding  organism,  began  in  a  low  voice 
on  the  forlorn  hope  of  making  me  comprehend  the 
mechanism  of  a  telephone-call  and  its  response.  And  I 
began  on  the  forlorn  hope  of  persuading  him  by  in 
telligent  acting  that  I  did  comprehend.  We  each  made 
a  little  progress.  I  could  not  tell  him  that,  though  I 
genuinely  and  humbly  admired  his  particular  variety 
of  genius,  what  interested  me  in  the  affair  was  not  the 

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YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

mechanics,  but  the  human  equation.  As  a  professional 
reader  of  faces,  I  glanced  as  well  as  I  could  sideways  at 
those  bent  girls'  faces  to  see  if  they  were  happy.  An 
absurd  inquiry!  Do  I  look  happy  when  I'm  at  work, 
I  wonder!  Did  they  then  look  reasonably  content? 
Well,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  they  looked  like  most 
other  faces — neither  one  thing  nor  the  other.  Still, 
in  a  great  establishment,  I  would  sooner  search  for 
sociological  information  in  the  faces  of  the  employed 
than  in  the  managerial  rules. 

"What  do  they  earn?"  I  asked,  when  we  emerged  from 
the  ten-atmosphere  pressure  of  that  intense  absorption. 
(Of  course  I  knew  that  no  young  women  could  possibly 
for  any  length  of  time  be  as  intensely  absorbed  as  these 
appeared  to  be.  But  the  illusion  was  there,  and  it  was 
effective.) 

I  learned  that  even  the  lowest  beginner  earned  five 
dollars  a  week.  It  was  just  the  sum  I  was  paying  for  a 
pair  of  clean  sheets  every  night  at  a  grand  hotel.  And 
that  the  salary  rose  to  six,  seven,  eight,  eleven,  and  even 
fourteen  dollars  for  supervisors,  who,  however,  had  to 
stand  on  their  feet  seven  and  a  half  hours  a  day,  as  shop 
girls  do  for  ten  hours  a  day ;  and  that  in  general  the  girls 
had  thirty  minutes  for  lunch,  and  a  day  off  every  week, 
and  that  the  Company  supplied  them  gratuitously  with 
tea,  coffee,  sugar,  couches,  newspapers,  arm-chairs,  and 
fresh  air,  of  which  last  fifty  fresh  cubic  feet  were  pumped 
in  for  every  operator  every  minute. 

"Naturally,"  I  was  told,  "the  discipline  is  strict. 
There  are  test  wires. .  .  .We  can  check  the  'time  elements.' 
.  .  .  We  keep  a  record  of  every  call.  They'll  take  a  dollar 

7* 


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a  week  less  in  an  outside  place — for  instance,  a  hotel.  .  .  . 
Their  average  stay  here  is  thirty  months." 

And  I  was  told  the  number  of  exchanges  there  were  in 
New  York,  exactly  like  the  one  I  was  seeing. 

A  dollar  a  week  less  in  a  hotel !  How  feminine !  And 
how  masculine!  And  how  wise  for  one  sort  of  young 
woman,  and  how  foolish  for  another!  .  .  .  Imagine 
quitting  that  convent  with  its  guaranteed  fresh  air, 
and  its  couches  and  sugar  and  so  on,  for  the  rough 
hazards  and  promiscuities  of  a  hotel!  On  the  other 
hand,  imagine  not  quitting  it! 

Said  the  demigod  of  the  electrical  world,  condescend 
ingly:  "All  this  telephone  business  is  done  on  a  mere  few 
hundred  horse-power.  Come  away,  and  I'll  show  you 
electricity  in  bulk." 

And  I  went  away  with  him,  thoughtful.  In  spite 
of  the  inhuman  perfection  of  its  functioning,  that  ex 
change  was  a  very  human  place  indeed.  It  brilliantly 
solved  some  problems;  it  raised  others.  Excessively 
difficult  to  find  any  fault  whatever  in  it!  A  marvelous 
service,  achieved  under  strictly  hygienic  conditions — 
and  young  women  must  make  their  way  through  the 
world!  And  yet —  Yes,  a  very  human  place  indeed! 

« 

The  demigods  of  the  electric  world  do  not  condescend 
to  move  about  in  petrol  motor-cars.  In  the  exercise 
of  a  natural  and  charming  coquetry  they  insist  on  elec 
trical  traction,  and  it  was  in  the  most  modern  and  sound 
less  electric  brougham  that  we  arrived  at  nightfall 
under  the  overhanging  cornice-eaves  of  two  gigantic 
Florentine  palaces — just  such  looming  palaces,  they 

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YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

appeared  in  the  dark,  as  may  be  seen  in  any  central 
street  of  Florence,  with  a  cinema-show  blazing  its  signs 
on  the  ground  floor,  and  Heaven  knows  what  remnants 
of  Italian  aristocracy  in  the  mysterious  upper  stories. 
Having  entered  one  of  the  palaces,  simultaneously  with 
a  tornado  of  wind,  we  passed  through  long,  deserted, 
narrow  galleries,  lined  with  thousands  of  small,  caged 
compartments  containing  "transformers,"  and  on  each 
compartment  was  a  label  bearing  always  the  same  words: 
"Danger,  6,600  volts."  "Danger,  6,600  volts."  "Dan 
ger,  6,600  volts."  A  wondrous  relief  when  we  had 
escaped  with  our  lives  from  the  menace  of  those  innumer 
able  volts !  And  then  we  stood  on  a  high  platform  sur 
rounded  by  handles,  switches,  signals — apparatus  enough 
to  put  all  New  York  into  darkness,  or  to  annihilate  it 
in  an  instant  by  the  unloosing  of  terrible  cohorts  of 
volts! — and  faced  an  enormous  white  hall,  sparsely 
peopled  by  a  few  colossal  machines  that  seemed  to  be 
revolving  and  oscillating  about  their  business  with  the 
fatalism  of  conquered  and  resigned  leviathans.  Im 
maculately  clean,  inconceivably  tidy,  shimmering  with 
brilliant  light  under  its  lofty  and  beautiful  ceiling, 
shaking  and  roaring  with  the  terrific  thunder  of  its  own 
vitality,  this  hall  in  which  no  common  voice  could  make 
itself  heard  produced  nevertheless  an  effect  of  magical 
stillness,  silence,  and  solitude.  We  were  alone  in  it, 
save  that  now  and  then  in  the  far-distant  spaces  a  figure 
might  flit  and  disappear  between  the  huge  glinting 
columns  of  metal.  It  was  a  hall  enchanted  and  in 
explicable.  I  understood  nothing  of  it.  But  I  under 
stood  that  half  the  electricity  of  New  York  was  being 

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SOME    ORGANIZATIONS 

generated  by  its  engines  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
horse-power,  and  that  if  the  spell  were  lifted  the  eleva 
tors  of  New  York  would  be  immediately  paralyzed,  and 
the  twenty  million  lights  expire  beneath  the  eyes  of  a 
startled  population.  I  could  have  gazed  at  it  to  this  day, 
and  brooded  to  this  day  upon  the  human  imaginations 
that  had  perfected  it;  but  I  was  led  off,  hypnotized,  to 
see  the  furnaces  and  boilers  under  the  earth.  And  even 
there  we  were  almost  alone,  to  such  an  extent  had  one 
sort  of  senseless  matter  been  compelled  to  take  charge 
of  another  sort  of  senseless  matter.  The  odyssey  of  the 
coal  that  was  lifted  high  out  of  ships  on  the  tide  beyond, 
to  fall  ultimately  into  the  furnaces  within,  scarcely 
touched  by  the  hand-wielded  shovel,  was  by  itself 
epical.  Fresh  air  pouring  in  at  the  rate  of  twenty-four 
million  cubic  feet  per  hour  cooled  the  entire  palace, 
and  gave  to  these  stoke-holes  the  uncanny  quality  of 
refrigerators.  The  lowest  horror  of  the  steamship  had 
been  abolished  here. 

I  was  tempted  to  say:  "This  alone  is  fit  to  be  called 
the  heart  of  New  York!" 

They  took  me  to  the  twin  palace,  and  on  the  windy 
way  thither  figures  were  casually  thrown  at  me.  As 
that  a  short  circuit  may  cause  the  machines  to  surge 
wildly  into  the  sudden  creation  of  six  million  horse 
power  of  electricity,  necessitating  the  invention  of  other 
machines  to  control  automatically  these  perilous  vaga 
ries  !  As  that  in  the  down-town  district  the  fire-engine 
was  being  abolished  because,  at  a  signal,  these  power 
houses  could  in  thirty  seconds  concentrate  on  any  given 
main  a  pressure  of  three  hundred  pounds  to  the  square 

6  81 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

inch,  lifting  jets  of  water  perhaps  above  the  roofs  of 
sky-scrapers!  As  that  the  city  could  fine  these  power 
houses  at  the  rate  of  five  hundred  dollars  a  minute 
for  any  interruption  of  the  current  longer  than  three 
minutes — but  the  current  had  never  failed  for  a  single 
second!  As  that  in  one  year  over  two  million  dollars' 
worth  of  machinery  had  been  scrapped!  .  .  .  And  I  was 
aware  that  it  was  New  York  I  was  in,  and  not  Timbuctoo. 
In  the  other  palace  it  appeared  that  the  great  American 
scrapping  process  was  even  yet  far  from  complete.  At 
first  sight  this  other  seemed  to  resemble  the  former  one, 
but  I  was  soon  instructed  that  the  former  one  was  as 
naught  to  this  one,  for  here  the  turbine — the  "strong, 
silent  man"  among  engines — was  replacing  the  racket 
of  cylinder  and  crank.  Statistics  are  tiresome  and  futile 
to  stir  the  imagination.  I  disdain  statistics,  even  when 
I  assimilate  them.  And  yet  when  my  attention  was 
directed  to  one  trifling  block  of  metal,  and  I  was  told 
that  it  was  the  most  powerful  "unit"  in  the  world,  and 
that  it  alone  would  make  electricity  sufficient  for  the 
lighting  of  a  city  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  people,  I 
felt  that  statistics,  after  all,  could  knock  you  a  stagger 
ing  blow.  ...  In  this  other  palace,  too,  was  the  same 
solitude  of  machinery,  attending  most  conscientiously 
and  effectively  to  itself.  A  singularly  disconcerting 
spectacle!  And  I  reflected  that,  according  to  dreams 
already  coming  true,  the  telephone-exchange  also  would 
soon  be  a  solitude  of  clicking  contact-points,  functioning 
in  mystic  certitude,  instead  of  a  convent  of  girls  requiring 
sugar  and  couches,  and  thirsting  for  love.  A  singularly 
disconcerting  prospect! 

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SOME    ORGANIZATIONS 

But  was  it  necessary  to  come  to  America  in  order  to 
see  and  describe  telephone  -  exchanges  and  electrical 
power-houses?  Do  not  these  wonders  exist  in  all  the 
cities  of  earth?  They  do,  but  not  to  quite  the  same 
degree  of  wondrousness.  Hat-shops,  and  fine  hat-shops, 
exist  in  New  York,  but  not  to  quite  the  same  degree 
of  wondrousness  as  in  Paris.  People  sing  in  New  York, 
but  not  with  quite  the  same  natural  lyricism  as  in 
Naples.  The  great  civilizations  all  present  the  same 
features;  but  it  is  just  the  differences  in  degree  between 
the  same  feature  in  this  civilization  and  in  that — it  is 
just  these  differences  which  together  constitute  and 
illustrate  the  idiosyncrasy  of  each.  It  seems  to  me  that 
the  brains  and  the  imagination  of  America  shone  super 
latively  in  the  conception  and  ordering  of  its  vast  or 
ganizations  of  human  beings,  and  of  machinery,  and  of 
the  two  combined.  By  them  I  was  more  profoundly 
attracted,  impressed,  and  inspired  than  by  any  other 
non-spiritual  phenomena  whatever  in  the  United  States. 
For  me  they  were  the  proudest  material  achievements, 
and  essentially  the  most  poetical  achievements,  of  the 
United  States.  And  that  is  why  I  am  dwelling  on  them. 

• 

Further,  there  are  business  organizations  in  America 
of  a  species  which  do  not  flourish  at  all  in  Europe.  For 
example,  the  " mail-order  house,"  whose  secrets  were 
very  generously  displayed  to  me  in  Chicago — a  peculiar 
establishment  which  sells  merely  everything  (except 
patent-medicines) — on  condition  that  you  order  it  by 
post.  Go  into  that  house  with  money  in  your  palm, 
and  ask  for  a  fan  or  a  flail  or  a  fur-coat  or  a  fountain- 

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YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

pen  or  a  fiddle,  and  you  will  be  requested  to  return  home 
and  write  a  letter  about  the  proposed  purchase,  and 
stamp  the  letter  and  drop  it  into  a  mail-box,  and  then 
to  wait  till  the  article  arrives  at  your  door.  That  house 
is  one  of  the  most  spectacular  and  pleasing  proofs  that 
the  inhabitants  of  the  United  States  are  thinly  scattered 
Dver  an  enormous  area,  in  tiny  groups,  often  quite 
Isolated  from  stores.  On  the  day  of  my  visit  sixty 
thousand  letters  had  been  received,  and  every  executable 
order  contained  in  these  was  executed  before  closing 
time,  by  the  co-ordinated  efforts  of  over  four  thousand 
female  employees  and  over  three  thousand  males.  The 
conception  would  make  Europe  dizzy.  Imagine  a  mer 
chant  in  Moscow  trying  to  inaugurate  such  a  scheme ! 

A  little  machine  no  bigger  than  a  soup-plate  will  open 
hundreds  of  envelops  at  once.  They  are  all  the  same, 
those  envelops;  they  have  even  less  individuality  than 
sheep  being  sheared,  but  when  the  contents  of  one— 
any  one  at  random — are  put  into  your  hand,  something 
human  and  distinctive  is  put  into  your  hand.  I  read  the 
caligraphy  on  a  blue  sheet  of  paper,  and  it  was  written 
by  a  woman  in  Wyoming,  a  neat,  earnest,  harassed, 
and  possibly  rather  harassing  woman,  and  she  wanted 
all  sorts  of  things  and  wanted  them  intensely — I  could 
see  that  with  clearness.  This  complex  purchase  was 
an  important  event  in  her  year.  So  far  as  her  imagina 
tion  went,  only  one  mail-order  would  reach  the  Chicago 
house  that  morning,  and  the  entire  establishment  would 
be  strained  to  meet  it. 

Then  the  blue  sheet  was  taken  from  me  and  thrust 
into  the  system,  and  therein  lost  to  me.  I  was  taken  to 

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a  mysteriously  rumbling  shaft  of  broad  diameter,  that 
pierced  all  the  floors  of  the  house  and  had  trap-doors 
on  each  floor.  And  when  one  of  the  trap-doors  was 
opened  I  saw  packages  of  all  descriptions  racing  after 
one  another  down  spiral  planes  within  the  shaft.  There 
were  several  of  these  great  shafts — with  divisions  for 
mail,  express,  and  freight  traffic — and  packages  were 
ceaselessly  racing  down  all  of  them,  laden  with  the 
objects  desired  by  the  woman  of  Wyoming  and  her 
fifty-nine-thousand-odd  fellow-customers  of  the  day. 
At  first  it  seemed  to  me  impossible  that  that  earnest, 
impatient  woman  in  Wyoming  should  get  precisely 
what  she  wanted;  it  seemed  to  me  impossible  that  some 
mistake  should  not  occur  in  all  that  noisy  fever  of  rush 
ing  activity.  But  after  I  had  followed  an  order,  and 
seen  it  filled  and  checked,  my  opinion  was  that  a  mis 
take  would  be  the  most  miraculous  phenomenon  in  that 
establishment.  I  felt  quite  reassured  on  behalf  of  Wyo 
ming. 

And  then  I  was  suddenly  in  a  room  where  six  hundred 
billing-machines  were  being  clicked  at  once  by  six  hun 
dred  young  women,  a  fantastic  aural  nightmare,  though 
none  of  the  young  women  appeared  to  be  conscious  that 
anything  bizarre  was  going  on.  ...  And  then  I  was  in 
a  printing-shop,  where  several  lightning  machines  spent 
their  whole  time  every  day  in  printing  the  most  popular 
work  of  reference  in  the  United  States,  a  bulky  book  full 
of  pictures,  with  an  annual  circulation  of  five  and  a  half 
million  copies — the  general  catalogue  of  the  firm.  For 
the  first  time  I  realized  the  true  meaning  of  the  word 
"  popularity " — and  sighed.  .  .  . 

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YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

And  then  it  was  lunch-time  for  about  a  couple  of 
thousand  employees,  and  in  the  boundless  restaurant 

I  witnessed  the  working  of  the  devices  which  enabled 
these  legions  to  choose  their  meals,  and  pay  for  them 
(cost  price)  in  a  few  moments,  and  without  advanced 
mathematical   calculations.     The   young   head   of   the 
restaurant  showed  me,  with  pride,  a  menu  of  over  a 
hundred  dishes — Austrian,  German,  Hungarian,  Italian, 
Scotch,  French,  and  American;  at  prices  from  one  cent 
up  as  high  as  ten  cents  (prime  roast -beef) — and  at  the 
foot  of  the  menu  was  his  personal  appeal:  "J  desire  to 
extend  to  you  a  cordial  invitation  to  inspect,"-  etc. 

II  My  constant  aim  will  be,"  etc.     Yet  it  was  not  his 
restaurant.     It  was  the  firm's  restaurant.     Here  I  had 
a  curious  illustration  of  an  admirable  characteristic  of 
American  business   methods  that  was  always  striking 
me — namely,  the  real  delegation  of  responsibility.     An 
American  board  of  direction  will  put  a  man  in  charge  of 
a  department,  as  a  viceroy  over  a  province,  saying,  as 
it  were:  "This  is  yours.     Do  as  you  please  with  it.     We 
will  watch  the  results."    A  marked  contrast  this  with 
the  centralizing  of  authority  which  seems  to  be  ever 
proceeding  in  Europe,  and  which  breeds  in  all  classes 
at  all  ages — especially  in  France — a  morbid  fear  and 
horror  of  accepting  responsibility. 

Later,  I  was  on  the  ground  level,  in  the  midst  of  an 
enormous  apparent  confusion — the  target  for  all  the 
packages  and  baskets,  big  and  little,  that  shot  every 
instant  in  a  continuous  stream  from  those  spiral  planes, 
and  slid  dangerously  at  me  along  the  floors.  Here 
were  the  packers.  I  saw  a  packer  deal  with  a  collected 

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order,  and  in  this  order  were  a  number  of  tiny  cookery 
utensils,  a  four-cent  curling-iron,  a  brush,  and  two 
incredibly  ugly  pink  china  mugs,  inscribed  in  cheap 
gilt  respectively  with  the  words  " Father  "  and  "Mother." 
Throughout  my  stay  in  America  no  moment  came 
to  me  more  dramatically  than  this  moment,  and  none 
has  remained  more  vividly  in  my  mind.  All  the  daily 
domestic  life  of  the  small  communities  in  the  wilds  of 
the  West  and  the  Middle  West,  and  in  the  wilds  of  the 
back  streets  of  the  great  towns,  seemed  to  be  revealed 
to  me  by  the  contents  of  that  basket,  as  the  packer 
wrapped  up  and  protected  one  article  after  another. 
I  had  been  compelled  to  abandon  a  visitation  of  the 
West  and  of  the  small  communities  everywhere,  and  I 
was  sorry.  But  here  in  a  microcosm  I  thought  I  saw  the 
simple  reality  of  the  backbone  of  all  America,  a  symbol 
of  the  millions  of  the  little  plain  people,  who  ultimately 
make  possible  the  glory  of  the  world-renowned  streets 
and  institutions  in  dazzling  cities. 

There  was  something  indescribably  touching  in  that 
curling-iron  and  those  two  mugs.  I  could  see  the  table 
on  which  the  mugs  would  soon  proudly  stand,  and 
"father"  and  "mother"  and  children  thereat,  and  I 
could  see  the  hand  heating  the  curling-iron  and  applying 
it.  I  could  see  the  whole  little  home  and  the  whole  life 
of  the  little  home.  .  .  .  And  afterward,  as  I  wandered 
through  the  warehouses — pyramids  of  the  same  chair, 
cupboards  full  of  the  same  cheap  violin,  stacks  of  the 
same  album  of  music,  acres  of  the  same  carpet  and  wall 
paper,  tons  of  the  same  gramophone,  hundreds  of  tons 
Of  the  same  sewing-machine  and  lawn-mower — I  felt 

87 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

as  if  I  had  been  made  free  of  the  secrets  of  every  village 
in  every  State  of  the  Union,  and  as  if  I  had  lived  in 
every  little  house  and  cottage  thereof  all  my  life?  Al 
most  no  sense  of  beauty  in  those^  tremendous  supplies 
of  merchandise,  but  a  lot  of  honesty,  self-respect,  and 
ambition  fulfilled.  I  tell  you  I  could  hear  the  engaged 
couples  discussing  ardently  over  the  pages  of  the  cata 
logue  what  manner  of  bedroom  suite  they  would  buy, 
and  what  design  of  sideboard.  .  .  . 

Finally,  I  arrived  at  the  firm's  private  railway  station, 
where  a  score  or  more  trucks  were  being  laden  with  the 
multifarious  boxes,  bales,  and  parcels,  all  to  leave  that 
evening  for  romantic  destinations  such  as  Oregon,  Texas, 
and  Wyoming.  Yes,  the  package  of  the  woman  of 
Wyoming's  desire  would  ultimately  be  placed  somewhere 
in  one  of  those  trucks !  It  was  going  to  start  off  toward 

her  that  very  night! 

« 

Impressive  as  this  establishment  was,  finely  as  it 
illustrated  the  national  genius  for  organization,  it  yet 
lacked  necessarily,  on  account  of  the  nature  of  its  ac 
tivity,  those  outward  phenomena  of  splendor  which 
charm  the  stranger's  eye  in  the  great  central  houses  of 
New  York,  and  which  seem  designed  to  sum  up  all  that 
is  most  characteristic  and  most  dazzling  in  the  business 
methods  of  the  United  States.  These  central  houses  are 
not  soiled  by  the  touch  of  actual  merchandise.  Noth 
ing  more  squalid  than  ink  ever  enters  their  gates.  They 
traffic  with  symbols  only,  and  the  symbols,  no  matter 
what  they  stand  for,  are  never  in  themselves  sordid. 
The  men  who  have  created  these  houses  seem  to  have 

88 


SOME    ORGANIZATIONS 

realized  that,  from  their  situation  and  their  importance, 
a  special  effort  toward  representative  magnificence  was 
their  pleasing  duty,  and  to  have  made  the  effort  with 
a  superb  prodigality  and  an  astounding  ingenuity. 

Take,  for  a  good,  glorious  example,  the  very  large 
insurance  company,  conscious  that  the  eyes  of  the  world 
are  upon  it,  and  that  the  entire  United  States  is  ex 
pecting  it  to  uphold  the  national  pride.  All  the  splen 
dors  of  all  the  sky-scrapers  are  united  in  its  building. 
Its  foyer  and  grand  staircase  will  sustain  comparison 
with  those  of  the  Paris  Opera.  You  might  think  you 
were  going  into  a  place  of  entertainment!  And,  as  a 
fact,  you  are!  This  affair,  with  nearly  four  thousand 
clerks,  is  the  huge  toy  and  pastime  of  a  group  of  mil 
lionaires  who  have  discovered  a  way  of  honestly  amusing 
themselves  while  gaining  applause  and  advertisement. 
Within  the  foyer  and  beyond  the  staircase,  notice  the 
outer  rooms,  partitioned  off  by  bronze  grilles,  looming 
darkly  gorgeous  in  an  eternal  windowless  twilight 
studded  with  the  beautiful  glowing  green  disks  of  elec 
tric-lamp  shades;  and  under  each  disk  a  human  head 
bent  over  the  black-and-red  magic  of  ledgers!  The 
desired  effect  is  at  once  obtained,  and  it  is  wonderful. 
Then  lose  yourself  in  and  out  of  the  ascending  and 
descending  elevators,  and  among  the  unending  multi 
tudes  of  clerks,  and  along  the  corridors  of  marble  (total 
length  exactly  measured  and  recorded).  You  will  be 
struck  dumb.  And  immediately  you  begin  to  recover 
your  speech  you  will  be  struck  dumb  again.  .  .  . 

Other  houses,  as  has  been  seen,  provide  good  meals 
for  their  employees  at  cost  price.  This  house,  then, 

89 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

will  provide  excellent  meals,  free  of  charge!  It  will 
install  the  most  expensive  kitchens  and  richly  spacious 
restaurants.  It  will  serve  the  delicate  repasts  with 
dignity.  "Does  all  this  lessen  the  wages?"  No,  not  in 
theory.  But  in  practice,  and  whether  the  management 
wishes  or  not,  it  must  come  out  of  the  wages.  "Why 
do  you  do  it?"  you  ask  the  departmental  chief,  who  ap 
parently  gets  far  more  fun  out  of  the  contemplation  of 
these  refectories  than  out  of  the  contemplation  of  pre 
miums  received  and  claims  paid.  "It  is  better  for  the 
employees,"  he  says.  "But  we  do  it  because  it  is  better 
for  us.  It  pays  us.  Good  food,  physical  comfort, 
agreeable  environment,  scientific  ventilation — all  these 
things  pay  us.  We  get  results  from  them."  He  does 
not  mention  horses,  but  you  feel  that  the  comparison 
is  with  horses.  A  horse,  or  a  clerk,  or  an  artisan — it 
pays  equally  well  to  treat  all  of  them  well.  This  is 
one  of  the  latest  discoveries  of  economic  science,  a  dis 
covery  not  yet  universally  understood. 

I  say  you  do  not  mention  horses,  and  you  certainly 
must  not  hint  that  the  men  in  authority  may  have  been 
actuated  by  motives  of  humanity.  You  must  believe 
what  you  are  told — that  the  sole  motive  is  to  get  results. 
The  eagerness  with  which  all  heads  of  model  establish 
ments  would  disavow  to  me  any  thought  of  being 
humane  was  affecting  in  its  naivet£;  it  had  that  touch  of 
ingenuous  wistfulness  which  I  remarked  everywhere  in 
America — and  nowhere  more  than  in  the  demeanor  of 
many  mercantile  highnesses.  (I  hardly  expect  Ameri- 
icans  to  understand  just  what  I  mean  here.)  It  was 
as  if  they  would  blush  at  being  caught  in  an  act  of 

90 


A   YOUNG   WOMAN    WAS   JUST   FINISHING   A    FLORID    SONG 


SOME    ORGANIZATIONS 

humanity,  like  school-boys  caught  praying.  Still,  to 
my  mind,  the  white  purity  of  their  desire  to  get  financial 
results  was  often  muddied  by  the  dark  stain  of  a  humane 
motive.  I  may  be  wrong  (as  people  say),  but  I  know  I 
am  not  (as  people  think). 

The  further  you  advance  into  the  penetralia  of  this 
arch-exemplar  of  American  organization  and  profusion, 
the  more  you  are  amazed  by  the  imaginative  perfection 
of  its  detail:  as  well  in  the  system  of  filing  for  instant 
reference  fifty  million  separate  documents,  as  in  the 
planning  of  a  concert-hall  for  the  diversion  of  the 
human  machines. 

As  we  went  into  the  immense  concert -hall  a  group  of 
girls  were  giving  an  informal  concert  among  themselves. 
When  lunch  is  served  on  the  premises  with  chronographic 
exactitude,  the  thirty-five  minutes  allowed  for  the  meal 
give  an  appreciable  margin  for  music  and  play.  A 
young  woman  was  just  finishing  a  florid  song.  The 
concert  was  suspended,  and  the  whole  party  began  to 
move  humbly  away  at  this  august  incursion. 

"{iing  it  again;  do,  please!"  the  departmental  chief 
suggested.  And  the  florid  song  was  nervously  sung 
again;  we  applauded,  the  artiste  bowed  as  on  a  stage, 
and  the  group  fled,  the  thirty-five  minutes  being  doubt 
less  up.  The  departmental  chief  looked  at  me  in 
silence,  content,  as  much  as  to  say:  "This  is  how  we  do 
business  in  America."  And  I  thought,  "Yet  another 
way  of  getting  results!" 

But  sometimes  the  creators  of  the  organization,  who 
had  provided  everything,  had  been  obliged  to  confess 
that  they  had  omitted  from  their  designs  certain  factors 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

of  evolution.  Hat-cupboards  were  a  feature  of  the  wom 
en's  offices — delightful  specimens  of  sound  cabinetry. 
And  still,  millinery  was  lying  about  all  over  the  place, 
giving  it  an  air  of  feminine  occupation  that  was  ex 
tremely  exciting  to  a  student  on  his  travels.  The 
truth  was  that  none  of  those  hats  would  go  into  the  cup 
boards.  Fashion  had  worsted  the  organization  com 
pletely.  Departmental  chiefs  had  nothing  to  bo  but 
acquiesce  in  this  startling  untidiness.  Either  they  must 
wait  till  the  circumference  of  hats  lessened  again,  or  they 
must  tear  down  the  whole  structure  and  rebuild  it  with 
due  regard  to  hats. 

Finally,  we  approached  the  sacred  lair  and  fastness 
of  the  president,  whose  massive  portrait  I  had  already 
seen  on  several  walls.  Spaciousness  and  magnificence 
increased.  Ceilings  rose  in  height,  marble  was  softened 
by  the  thick  pile  of  carpets.  Mahogany  and  gold  shone 
more  luxuriously.  I  was  introduced  into  the  vast  ante 
chamber  of  the  presidential  secretaries,  and  by  the  chief 
of  them  inducted  through  polished  and  gleaming  bar 
riers  into  the  presence-chamber  itself:  a  noble  apart 
ment,  an  apartment  surpassing  dreams  and  expectations, 
conceived  and  executed  in  a  spirit  of  majestic  prod 
igality.  The  president  had  not  been  afraid.  And  his 
costly  audacity  was  splendidly  justified  of  itself.  This 
man  had  a  sense  of  the  romantic,  of  the  dramatic,  of 
the  fit.  And  the  qualities  in  him  and  his  £tat  major 
which  had  commanded  the  success  of  the  entire  enter 
prise  were  well  shown  in  the  brilliant  symbolism  of  that 
room's  grandiosity.  .  .  .  And  there  was  the  president's 
portrait  again,  gorgeously  framed. 

92 


SOME    ORGANIZATIONS 

He  came  in  through  another  door,  an  old  man  of 
superb  physique,  and  after  a  little  while  he  was  relating 
to  me  the  early  struggles  of  his  company.  "My  wife 
used  to  say  that  for  ten  years  she  never  saw  me,"  he 
remarked. 

I  asked  him  what  his  distractions  were,  now  that  the 
strain  was  over  and  his  ambitions  so  gloriously  achieved. 
He  replied  that  occasionally  he  went  for  a  drive  in  his 
automobile. 

"And  what  do  you  do  with  yourself  in  the  evenings?" 
I  inquired. 

He  seemed  a  little  disconcerted  by  this  perhaps  un 
accustomed  bluntness. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  casually,  "I  read  insurance  literature." 

He  had  the  conscious  mien  and  manners  of  a  reigning 
prince.  His  courtesy  and  affability  were  impeccable 
and  charming.  In  the  most  profound  sense  this  human 
being  had  succeeded,  for  it  was  impossible  to  believe 
that,  had  he  to  live  his  life  again,  he  would  live  it  very 
differently. 

Such  a  type  of  man  is,  of  course,  to  be  found  in  nearly 
every  country;  but  the  type  flourishes  with  a  unique 
profusion  and  perfection  in  the  United  States ;  and  in  its 
more  prominent  specimens  the  distinguishing  idiosyn 
crasy  of  the  average  American  successful  man  of  busi 
ness  is  magnified  for  our  easier  inspection.  The  rough, 
broad  difference  between  the  American  and  the  European 
business  man  is  that  the  latter  is  anxious  to  leave  his 
work,  while  the  former  is  anxious  to  get  to  it.  The 
attitude  of  the  American  business  man  toward  his 
business  is  pre-eminently  the  attitude  of  an  artist.  You 

93 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

may  say  that  he  loves  money.  So  do  we  all — artists 
particularly.  No  stock-broker's  private  journal  could  be 
more  full  of  dollars  than  Balzac's  intimate  correspond 
ence  is  full  of  francs.  But  whereas  the  ordinary  artist 
loves  money  chiefly  because  it  represents  luxury,  the 
American  business  man  loves  it  chiefly  because  it  is  the 
sole  proof  of  success  in  his  endeavor.  He  loves  his 
business.  It  is  not  his  toil,  but  his  hobby,  passion, 
vice,  monomania — any  vituperative  epithet  you  like 
to  bestow  on  it !  He  does  not  look  forward  to  living  in 
the  evening;  he  lives  most  intensely  when  he  is  in  the 
midst  of  his  organization.  His  instincts  are  best  ap 
peased  by  the  hourly  excitements  of  a  good,  scrimmaging 
commercial  day.  He  needs  these  excitements  as  some 
natures  need  alcohol.  He  cannot  do  without  them. 

On  no  other  hypothesis  can  the  unrivaled  ingenuity 
and  splendor  and  ruthlessness  of  American  business 
undertakings  be  satisfactorily  explained.  They  surpass 
the  European,  simply  because  they  are  never  out  of  the 
thoughts  of  their  directors,  because  they  are  adored 
with  a  fine  frenzy.  And  for  the  same  reason  they  are 
decked  forth  in  magnificence.  Would  a  man  enrich 
his  office  with  rare  woods  and  stuffs  and  marbles  if  it 
were  not  a  temple?  Would  he  bestow  graces  on  the  en 
vironment  if  while  he  was  in  it  the  one  idea  at  the  back 
of  his  head  was  the  anticipation  of  leaving  it?  Watch 
American  business  men  together,  and  if  you  are  a 
European  you  will  clearly  perceive  that  they  are  dev 
otees.  They  are  open  with  one  another,  as  intimates 
are.  Jealousy  and  secretiveness  are  much  rarer  among 
them  than  in  Europe.  They  show  off  their  respective 

94 


ABSORBED   IN   THAT    WONDROUS    SATISFYING    HOBBY 


SOME    ORGANIZATIONS 

organizations  with  pride  and  with  candor.  They  ad 
mire  one  another  enormously.  Hear  one  of  them  say  en 
thusiastically  of  another:  "It  was  a  great  idea  he  had 
—connecting  his  New  York  and  his  Philadelphia  places 
by  wireless — a  great  idea!"  They  call  one  another  by 
their  Christian  names,  fondly.  They  are  capable  of 
wonderful  friendships  in  business.  They  are  cemented 
by  one  religion — and  it  is  not  golf.  For  them  the  journey 
"home"  is  often  not  the  evening  journey,  but  the  morn 
ing  journey.  Call  this  a  hard  saying  if  you  choose:  it 
is  true.  Could  a  man  be  happy  long  away  from  a  hobby 
so  entrancing,  a  toy  so  intricate  and  marvelous,  a  setting 
so  splendid?  Is  it  strange  that,  absorbed  in  that  won 
drous  satisfying  hobby,  he  should  make  love  with  the 
nonchalance  of  an  animal?  At  which  point  I  seem  to 
have  come  dangerously  near  to  the  topic  of  the  singular 
position  of  the  American  woman,  about  which  every 
body  is  talking.  .  .  . 


V 

TRANSIT    AND    HOTELS 


TRANSIT   AND   HOTELS 

HTHE  choice  of  such  a  trite  topic  as  the  means  of 
1  travel  may  seem  to  denote  that  my  observations 
in  the  United  States  must  have  been  superficial.  They 
were.  I  never  hoped  that  they  would  be  otherwise. 
In  seven  weeks  (less  one  day)  I  could  not  expect  to  pene 
trate  very  far  below  the  engaging  surface  of  things. 
Nor  did  I  unnaturally  attempt  to  do  so ;  for  the  evidence 
of  the  superficies  is  valuable,  and  it  can  only  be  properly 
gathered  by  the  stranger  at  first  sight.  Among  the 
scenes  and  phenomena  that  passed  before  me  I  of  course 
remember  best  those  which  interested  me  most.  Rail 
roads  and  trains  have  always  appealed  to  me;  I  have 
often  tried  to  express  my  sense  of  their  romantic  savor. 
And  I  was  eager  to  see  and  appreciate  these  particular 
manifestations  of  national  character  in  America. 

It  happily  occurred  that  my  first  important  journey 
from  New  York  was  on  the  Pennsylvania  Road. 

"I'll  meet  you  at  the  station,"  I  said  to  my  particular 
friend. 

"Oh  no!"  he  answered,  positively.  "I'll  pick  you 
up  on  my  way." 

The  fact  was  that  not  for  ten  thousand  dollars  would 
he  have  missed  the  spectacle  of  my  sensations  as  I 
beheld  for  the  first  time  the  most  majestic  terminus  in 

99 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

the  world!  He  alone  would  usher  me  into  the  gates  of 
that  marvel!  I  think  he  was  not  disappointed.  I 
frankly  surrendered  myself  to  the  domination  of  this 
extraordinary  building.  I  did  not  compare.  I  knew 
there  could  be  no  comparison.  Whenever  afterward 
I  heard,  as  I  often  did,  enlightened,  Europe-loving 
citizens  of  the  United  States  complain  that  the  United 
States  was  all  very  well,  but  there  was  no  art  in  the 
United  States,  the  image  of  this  tremendous  master 
piece  would  rise  before  me,  and  I  was  inclined  to  say: 
"Have  you  ever  crossed  Seventh  Avenue,  or  are  you 
merely  another  of  those  who  have  been  to  Europe  and 
learned  nothing?"  The  Pennsylvania  station  is  full 
of  the  noble  qualities  that  fine  and  heroic  imagination 
alone  can  give.  That  there  existed  a  railroad  man 
poetic  and  audacious  enough  to  want  it,  architects  with 
genius  powerful  enough  to  create  it,  and  a  public  with 
heart  enough  to  love  it — these  things  are  for  me  a  surer 
proof  that  the  American  is  a  great  race  than  the  exis 
tence  of  any  quantity  of  wealthy  universities,  museums 
of  classic  art,  associations  for  prison  reform,  or  deep- 
delved  safe-deposit  vaults  crammed  with  bonds.  Such 
a  monument  does  not  spring  up  by  chance;  it  is  part  of 
the  slow  flowering  of  a  nation's  secret  spirit! 

The  terminus  emerged  brilliantly  from  an  examina 
tion  of  the  complicated  detail,  both  esthetic  and  prac 
tical,  that  is  embedded  in  the  apparent  simplicity  of 
its  vast  physiognomy.  I  discovered  everything  in  it 
proper  to  a  station,  except  trains.  Not  a  sign  of  a  train. 
My  impulse  was  to  ask,  ' '  Is  this  the  tomb  of  Alexander 
J.  Cassatt,  or  is  it  a  cathedral,  or  is  it,  after  all,  a  railroad 

100 


IN   THE    PARLOR-CAR 


TRANSIT   AND 

station?'*  Then  I  was  led  with  due  ceremony  across 
the  boundless  plains  of  granite  to  a  secret  staircase, 
guarded  by  lions  in  uniform,  and  at  the  foot  of  this 
staircase,  hidden  like  a  shame  or  a  crime,  I  found  a 
resplendent  train,  the  Congressional  Limited.  It  was 
not  the  Limited  of  my  dreams;  but  it  was  my  first 
American  Limited,  and  I  boarded  it  in  a  condition  of 
excitement.  I  criticized,  of  course,  for  every  experienced 
traveler  has  decided  views  concerning  trains  de  luxe. 
The  cars  impressed  rather  than  charmed  me.  I  pre 
ferred,  and  still  prefer,  the  European  variety  of  Pullman. 
(Yes,  I  admit  we  owe  it  entirely  to  America !)  And  then 
there  is  a  harsh,  inhospitable  quality  about  those  all- 
steel  cars.  They  do  not  yield.  You  think  you  are  touch 
ing  wood,  and  your  knuckles  are  abraded.  The  imita 
tion  of  wood  is  a  triumph  of  mimicry,  but  by  no  means 
a  triumph  of  artistic  propriety.  Why  should  steel  be 
made  to  look  like  wood?  .  .  .  Fireproof,  you  say.  But 
is  anything  fireproof  in  the  United  States,  except  per 
haps  Tammany  Hall?  Has  not  the  blazing  of  fire 
proof  constructions  again  and  again  singed  off  the  eye 
brows  of  dauntless  firemen?  My  impression  is  that 
"fireproof,"  in  the  American  tongue,  is  one  of  those 
agreeable  but  quite  meaningless  phrases  whch  adorn 
the  languages  of  all  nations.  Another  such  phrase,  in 
the  American  tongue,  is  "right  away!"  .  .  . 

I  sat  down  in  my  appointed  place  in  the  all-steel  car, 
and,  turning  over  the  pages  of  a  weekly  paper,  saw 
photographs  of  actual  collisions,  showing  that  in  an 
altercation  between  trains  the  steel-and-wood  car  could 
knock  the  all-steel  car  into  a  cocked  hat !  .  .  .  The  dec- 

IOI 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

oration  of  the  all-steel  car  does  not  atone  for  its  prob 
able  combustibility  and  its  proved  fragility.  In  par 
ticular,  the  smoking-cars  of  all  the  Limiteds  I  intrusted 
myself  to  were  defiantly  and  wilfully  ugly.  Still,  a 
fine,  proud  train,  handsome  in  some  ways!  And  the 
trainmen  were  like  admirals,  captains,  and  first  officers 
pacing  bridges;  clearly  they  owned  the  train,  and  had 
kindly  lent  it  to  the  Pennsylvania  R.  R.  Their  demeanor 
expressed  a  rare  sense  of  ownership  and  also  of  re 
sponsibility.  While  very  polite,  they  condescended. 
A  strong  contrast  to  the  miserable  European  "guard'* 
—for  all  his  silver  buttons!  I  adventured  into  the  ob 
servation-car,  of  which  institution  I  had  so  often  heard 
Americans  speak  with  pride,  and  speculated  why,  here 
as  in  all  other  cars,  the  tops  of  the  windows  were  so  low 
that  it  was  impossible  to  see  the  upper  part  of  the 
thing  observed  (roofs,  telegraph-wires,  tree-foliage,  hill- 
summits,  sky)  without  bending  the  head  and  cricking 
the  neck.  I  do  not  deny  that  I  was  setting  a  high  stan 
dard  of  perfection,  but  then  I  had  heard  so  much  all 
my  life  about  American  Limiteds! 

The  Limited  started  with  exactitude,  and  from  the 
observation-car  I  watched  the  unrolling  of  the  wondrous 
Hudson  tunnel — one  of  the  major  sights  of  New  York, 
and  a  thing  of  curious  beauty.  .  .  .  The  journey  passed 
pleasantly,  with  no  other  episode  than  that  of  dinner, 
which  cost  a  dollar  and  was  worth  just  about  a  dollar, 
despite  the  mutton.  And  with  exactitude  we  arrived 
at  Washington — another  splendid  station.  I  generalized 
thus:  "It  is  certain  that  this  country  understands  rail 
road  stations."  I  was,  however,  fresh  in  the  country, 

102 


TRANSIT   AND    HOTELS 

and  had  not  then  seen  New  Haven  station,  which, 
as  soon  as  it  is  quite  done  with,  ought  to  be  put  in  a 
museum. 

We  returned  from  Washington  by  a  night  train;  we 
might  have  taken  a  day  train,  but  it  was  pointed  out  to 
me  that  I  ought  to  get  into  "form"  for  certain  pro 
jected  long  journeys  into  the  West.  At  midnight  I 
was  brusquely  introduced  to  the  American  sleeping- 
car.  I  confess  that  I  had  not  imagined  anything  so  ap 
palling  as  the  confined,  stifling,  malodorous  promiscuity 
of  the  American  sleeping-car,  where  men  and  women 
are  herded  together  on  shelves  under  the  drastic  control 
of  an  official  aided  by  negroes.  I  care  not  to  dwell  on 
the  subject.  ...  I  have  seen  European  prisons,  but  in 
none  that  I  have  seen  would  such  a  system  be  tolerated, 
even  by  hardened  warders  and  governors ;  and  assuredly, 
if  it  were,  public  opinion  would  rise  in  anger  and  destroy 
it.  I  have  not  been  in  Siberian  prisons,  but  I  remember 
reading  George  Kennan's  description  of  their  mild 
horrors,  and  I  am  surprised  that  he  should  have  put 
himself  to  the  trouble  of  such  a  tedious  journey  when 
he  might  have  discovered  far  more  exciting  material 
on  any  good  road  around  New  York.  However,  nobody 
seemed  to  mind,  such  is  the  force  of  custom — and  I  did 
not  mind  very  much,  because  my  particular  friend,  in 
telligently  foreseeing  my  absurd  European  prejudices, 
had  engaged  for  us  a  state-room. 

This  state-room,  or  suite — for  it  comprised  two  apart 
ments — was  a  beautiful  and  aristocratic  domain.  The 
bedchamber  had  a  fan  that  would  work  at  three  speeds 
like  an  automobile,  and  was  an  enchanting  toy.  In 

103 


YOUR    UNITED   STATES 

short,  I  could  find  no  fault  with  the  accommodation. 
It  was  perfect,  and  would  have  remained  perfect  had  the 
train  remained  in  the  station.  Unfortunately,  the  engine- 
driver  had  the  unhappy  idea  of  removing  the  train  from 
the  station.  He  seemed  to  be  an  angry  engine-driver, 
and  his  gesture  was  that  of  a  man  setting  his  teeth  and 
hissing:  "Now,  then,  come  out  of  that,  you  sluggards!" 
and  giving  a  ferocious  tug.  There  was  a  fearful  jerk, 
and  in  an  instant  I  understood  why  sleeping-berths  in 
America  are  always  arranged  lengthwise  with  the  train. 
If  they  were  not,  the  passengers  would  spend  most  of 
the  night  in  getting  up  off  the  floor  and  climbing  into 
bed  again.  A  few  hundred  yards  out  of  the  station 
the  engine-driver  decided  to  stop,  and  there  was  the  same 
fearful  jerk  and  concussion.  Throughout  the  night  he 
stopped  and  he  started  at  frequent  intervals,  and  always 
with  the  fearful  jerk.  Sometimes  he  would  slow  down 
gently  and  woo  me  into  a  false  tranquillity,  but  only  to 
finish  with  the  same  jerk  rendered  more  shocking  by 
contrast. 

The  bedchamber  was  delightful,  the  lavatory  amount 
ed  to  a  boudoir,  the  reading-lamp  left  nothing  to  desire, 
the  ventilation  was  a  continuous  vaudeville  entertain 
ment,  the  watch-pocket  was  adorable,  the  mattress  was 
good.  Even  the  road-bed  was  quite  respectable — not 
equal  to  the  best  I  knew,  probably,  but  it  had  the  great 
advantage  of  well- tied  rails,  so  that  as  the  train  passed 
from  one  rail-length  to  the  next  you  felt  no  jar,  a  bliss 
utterly  unknown  in  Europe.  The  secret  of  a  satis 
factory  "sleeper,"  however,  does  not  lie  in  the  state 
room,  nor  in  the  glittering  lavatory,  nor  in  the  lamp, 

104 


TRANSIT   AND    HOTELS 

nor  in  the  fan,  nor  in  the  watch-pocket,  nor  in  the  bed, 
nor  even  in  the  road-bed.  It  lies  in  the  mannerisms  of 
that  brave  fellow  out  there  in  front  of  you  on  the  engine, 
in  the  wind  and  the  rain.  But  no  one  in  all  America 
seemed  to  appreciate  this  deep  truth.  For  myself, 
I  was  inclined  to  go  out  to  the  engine-driver  and  say  to 
him:  "Brother,  are  you  aware — you  cannot  be — that 
the  best  European  trains  start  with  the  imperceptible 
stealthiness  of  a  bad  habit,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to 
distinguish  motion  from  immobility,  and  come  to  rest 
with  the  softness  of  doves  settling  on  the  shoulders 
of  a  young  girl?"  ...  If  the  fault  is  not  the  engine- 
driver's,  then  are  the  brakes  to  blame?  Inconceivable! 
.  .  .  All  American  engine-drivers  are  alike;  and  I  never 
slept  a  full  hour  in  any  American  "sleeper,"  what  with 
stops,  starts,  hootings,  tollings,  whizzings  round  sharp 
corners,  listening  to  the  passage  of  freight-trains,  and 
listening  to  haughty  conductor-admirals  who  quarreled 
at  length  with  newly  arrived  voyagers  at  2  or  3  A.M.  ! 
I  do  not  criticize ;  I  state.  I  also  blame  myself.  There 
are  those  who  could  sleep.  But  not  everybody  could 
sleep.  Well  and  heartily  do  I  remember  the  moment 
when  another  friend  of  mine,  in  the  midst  of  an  intermi 
nable  scolding  that  was  being  given  by  a  nasal- voiced 
conductor  to  a  passenger  just  before  the  dawn,  exposed 
his  head  and  remarked :  "Has  it  occurred  to  you  that  this 
is  a  sleeping-car?"  In  the  swift  silence  the  whirring  of 
my  private  fan  could  be  heard. 

*I  arrived  in  New  York  from  Washington,  as  I  arrived 
at  all  my  destinations  after  a  night  journey,  in  a  state  of 
enfeebled  submissiveness,  and  I  retired  to  bed  in  a  hotel. 

105 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

And  for  several  hours  the  hotel  itself  would  stop  and  start 
with  a  jerk  and  whiz  round  corners. 


For  many  years  I  had  dreamed  of  traveling  by  the 
great,  the  unique,  the  world-renowned  New  York- 
Chicago  train;  indeed,  it  would  not  be  a  gross  exaggera 
tion  to  say  that  I  came  to  America  in  order  to  take  that 
train;  and  at  length  time  brought  my  dream  true.  I 
boarded  the  thing  in  New  York,  this  especial  product 
of  the  twentieth  century,  and  yet  another  thrilling 
moment  in  my  life  came  and  went!  I  boarded  it  with 
pride;  everybody  boarded  it  with  pride;  and  in  every 
eye  was  the  gleam:  ''This  is  the  train  of  trains,  and  I 
have  my  state-room  on  it."  Perhaps  I  was  ever  so 
slightly  disappointed  with  the  dimensions  and  appoint 
ments  of  the  state-room — I  may  have  been  expecting 
a  whole  car  to  myself — but  the  general  self-conscious 
smartness  of  the  train  reassured  me.  I  wandered  into 
the  observation-car,  and  saw  my  particular  friend  proud 
ly  employ  the  train-telephone  to  inform  his  office  that 
he  had  caught  the  train.  I  saw  also  the  free  supply  of 
newspapers,  the  library  of  books,  the  typewriting-ma 
chine,  and  the  stenographer  by  its  side — all  as  promised. 
And  I  knew  that  at  the  other  end  of  the  train  was  a 
dining-car,  a  smoking-car,  and  a  barber-shop.  I  picked 
up  the  advertising  literature  scattered  about  by  a 
thoughtful  Company,  and  learned  therefrom  that  this 
train  was  not  a  mere  experiment;  it  was  the  finished 
fruit  of  many  experiments,  and  that  while  offering  the 
conveniences  of  a  hotel  or  a  club,  it  did  with  regularity 

106 


TRANSIT   AND    HOTELS 

what  it  undertook  to  do  in  the  way  of  speed  and  prompt 
ness.     The  pamphlet  made  good  reading!  .  .  . 

I  noted  that  it  pleased  the  Company  to  run  two  other 
very  important  trains  out  of  the  terminus  simultaneously 
with  the  unique  train.  Bravado,  possibly;  but  bravado 
which  invited  the  respect  of  all  those  who  admire  en 
terprise  !  I  anticipated  with  pleasure  the  noble  spectacle 
of  these  three  trains  sailing  forth  together  on  three 
parallel  tracks;  which  pleasure  was  denied  me.  We  for 
Chicago  started  last;  we  started  indeed,  according  to 
my  poor  European  watch,  from  fifteen  to  thirty  seconds 
late!  .  .  .  No  matter!  I  would  not  stickle  for  seconds: 
particularly  as  at  Chicago,  by  the  terms  of  a  contract 
which  no  company  in  Europe  would  have  had  the  grace 
to  sign,  I  was  to  receive,  for  any  unthinkable  lateness, 
compensation  at  the  rate  of  one  cent  for  every  thirty- 
six  seconds! 

Within  a  quarter  of  an  hour  it  became  evident  that 
that  train  had  at  least  one  great  quality — it  moved. 
As,  in  the  deepening  dusk,  we  swung  along  the  banks  of 
the  glorious  Hudson,  veiled  now  in  the  vaporous  mys 
teries  following  a  red  sunset,  I  was  obliged  to  admit 
with  increasing  enthusiasm  that  that  train  did  move. 
Even  the  persecutors  of  Galileo  would  never  have  had 
the  audacity  to  deny  that  that  train  moved.  And  one 
felt,  comfortably,  that  the  whole  Company,  with  all 
the  Company's  resources,  was  watching  over  its  flying 
pet,  giving  it  the  supreme  right  of  way  and  urging  it 
forward  by  hearty  good- will.  One  felt  also  that  the 
moment  had  come  for  testing  the  amenities  of  the  hotel 
and  the  club. 

107 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

"Tea,  please,"  I  said,  jauntily,  confidently,  as  we 
entered  the  spotless  and  appetizing  restaurant-car. 

The  extremely  polite  and  kind  captain  of  the  car  was 
obviously  taken  aback.  But  he  instinctively  grasped 
that  the  reputation  of  the  train  hung  in  the  balance, 
and  he  regained  his  self-possession. 

"Tea?"  His  questioning  inflection  delicately  hinted: 
"Try  not  to  be  too  eccentric." 

"Tea." 

"Here?" 

"Here." 

"I  can  serve  it  here,  of  course,"  said  the  captain, 
persuasively.  "But  if  you  don't  mind  I  should  prefer 
to  serve  it  in  your  state-room." 

We  reluctantly  consented.  The  tea  was  well  made  and 
well  served. 

In  an  instant,  as  it  seemed,  we  were  crossing  a  dark 
river,  on  which  reposed  several  immense,  many-storied 
river-steamers,  brilliantly  lit.  I  had  often  seen  illus 
trations  of  these  craft,  but  never  before  the  reality.  A 
fine  sight — and  it  made  me  think  of  Mark  Twain's  in 
comparable  masterpiece,  Life  on  ike  Mississippi,  for 
which  I  would  sacrifice  the  entire  works  of  Thackeray 
and  George  Eliot.  We  ran  into  a  big  town,  full  of  elec 
tric  signs,  and  stopped.  Albany!  One  minute  late!  I 
descended  to  watch  the  romantic  business  of  changing 
engines.  I  felt  sure  that  changing  the  horses  of  a  fash 
ionable  mail-coach  would  be  as  nothing  to  this.  The 
first  engine  had  already  disappeared.  The  new  one 
rolled  tremendous  and  overpowering  toward  me;  its 
wheels  rose  above  my  head,  and  the  driver  glanced  down 

108 


TRANSIT   AND    HOTELS 

at  me  as  from  a  bedroom  window.  I  was  sensible  of  all 
the  mystery  and  force  of  the  somber  monster;  I  felt  the 
mystery  of  the  unknown  railway  station,  and  of  the 
strange  illuminated  city  beyond.  And  I  had  a  corner 
in  my  mind  for  the  thought:  " Somewhere  near  me 
Broadway  actually  ends."  Then,  while  dark  men  under 
the  ray  of  a  lantern  fumbled  with  the  gigantic  couplings, 
I  said  to  myself  that  if  I  did  not  get  back  to  my  car  I 
should  probably  be  left  behind.  I  regained  my  state 
room  and  waited,  watch  in  hand,  for  the  jerk  of  restart 
ing.  I  waited  half  an  hour.  Some  mishap  with  the 
couplings!  We  left  Albany  thirty-three  minutes  late. 
Habitues  of  the  train  affected  nonchalance.  One  of 
them  offered  to  bet  me  that  "she  would  make  it  up." 
The  admirals  and  captains  avoided  our^gaze. 

We  dined,  a  la  carte;  the  first  time  I  had  ever  dined 
a  la  carte  on  any  train.  An  excellent  dinner,  well  and 
sympathetically  served.  The  mutton  was  impeccable. 
And  in  another  instant,  as  it  seemed,  we  were  running, 
with  no  visible  flags,  through  an  important  and  showy 
street  of  a  large  town,  and  surface-cars  were  crossing 
one  another  behind  us.  I  had  never  before  seen  an 
express  train  let  loose  in  the  middle  of  an  unprotected 
town,  and  I  was  naif  enough  to  be  startled.  But  a 
huge  electric  sign — "Syracuse  bids  you  welcome" — 
tranquilized  me.  We  briefly  halted,  and  drew  away 
from  the  allurement  of  those  bright  streets  into  the 
deep,  perilous  shade  of  the  open  country. 

I  went  to  bed.  The  night  differed  little  from  other 
nights  spent  in  American  sleeping-cars,  and  I  therefore 
will  not  describe  it  in  detail.  To  do  so  might  amount 

109 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

to  a  solecism.  Enough  to  say  that  the  jerkings  were 
possibly  less  violent  and  certainly  less  frequent  than 
usual,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  halts  were  strangely 
long;  one,  indeed,  seemed  to  last  for  hours;  I  had  to 
admit  to  myself  that  I  had  been  to  sleep  and  dreamed 
this  stoppage. 

From  a  final  cat-nap  I  at  last  drew  up  my  blind  to  greet 
the  oncoming  day,  and  was  rewarded  by  one  of  the  finest 
and  most  poetical  views  I  have  ever  seen:  a  misty, 
brown  river  flanked  by  a  jungle  of  dark  reddish  and 
yellowish  chimneys  and  furnaces  that  covered  it  with 
shifting  canopies  of  white  steam  and  of  smoke,  varying 
from  the  delicatest  grays  to  intense  black;  a  beautiful 
dim  gray  sky  lightening,  and  on  the  ground  and  low, 
flat  roofs  a  thin  crust  of  snow:  Toledo!  A  wonderful 
and  inspiring  panorama,  just  as  romantic  in  its  own 
way  as  any  Spanish  Toledo.  Yet  I  regretted  its  name, 
and  I  regretted  the  grotesque  names  of  other  towns  on 
the  route — Canaan,  Syracuse,  Utica,  Geneva,  Ceylon, 
Waterloo,  and  odd  combinations  ending  in  "burg." 
The  names  of  most  of  the  States  are  superb.  What 
could  be  more  beautiful  than  Ohio,  Idaho,  Kentucky, 
Iowa,  Missouri,  Wyoming,  Illinois — above  all,  Illinois? 
Certain  cities,  too,  have  grand  names.  In  its  vocal 
quality  "Chicago"  is  a  perfect  prince  among  names. 
But  the  majority  of  town,  names  in  America  suffer,  no 
doubt  inevitably,  from  a  lack  of  imagination  and  of 
reflection.  They  have  the  air  of  being  bought  in  haste 
at  a  big  advertising  "ready-for-service"  establishment. 

Remembering  in  my  extreme  prostration  that  I  was 
in  a  hotel  and  club,  and  not  in  an  experiment,  I  rang 

no 


TRANSIT    AND    HOTELS 

the  bell,  and  a  smiling  negro  presented  himself.  It  was 
only  a  quarter  to  seven  in  Toledo,  but  I  was  sustained 
in  my  demeanor  by  the  fact  that  it  was  a  quarter  to 
eight  in  New  York. 

"Will  you  bring  me  some  tea,  please?'* 

He  was  sympathetic,  but  he  said  flatly  I  couldn't  have 
tea,  nor  anything,  and  that  nobody  could  have  any 
thing  at  all  for  an  hour  and  a  half,  as  there  would  be 
no  restaurant-car  till  Elkhart,  and  Elkhart  was  quite 
ninety  miles  off.  He  added  that  an  engine  had  broken 
down  at  Cleveland. 

I  lay  in  collapse  for  over  an  hour,  and  then,  summon 
ing  my  manhood,  arose.  On  the  previous  evening  the 
hot-water  tap  of  my  toilette  had  yielded  only  cold  water. 
Not  wishing  to  appear  hypercritical,  I  had  said  nothing, 
but  I  had  thought.  I  now  casually  turned  on  the  cold- 
water  tap  and  was  scalded  by  nearly  boiling  water.  The 
hot-water  tap  still  yielded  cold  water.  Lest  I  should  be 
accused  of  inventing  this  caprice  of  plumbing  in  a  hotel 
and  club,  I  give  the  name  of  the  car.  It  was  appropri 
ately  styled  "Watertown"  (compartment  E). 

In  the  corridor  an  admiral,  audaciously  interrogated, 
admitted  that  the  train  was  at  that  moment  two  hours 
and  ten  minutes  late.  As  for  Elkhart,  it  seemed  to  be 
still  about  ninety  miles  away.  I  went  into  the  observa 
tion-saloon  to  cheer  myself  up  by  observing,  and  was 
struck  by  a  chill,  and  by  the  chilly,  pinched  demeanor 
of  sundry  other  passengers,  and  by  the  apologetic  faces 
of  certain  captains.  Already  in  my  state-room  my 
senses  had  suspected  a  chill;  but  I  had  refused  to  be 
lieve  my  senses.  I  knew  and  had  known  all  my  life 

in 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

that  American  trains  were  too  hot,  and  I  had  put  down 
the  supposed  chill  to  a  psychological  delusion.  It  was, 
however,  no  delusion.  As  we  swept  through  a  snowy 
landscape  the  apologetic  captains  announced  sadly  that 
the  engine  was  not  sparing  enough  steam  to  heat  the 
whole  of  the  train.  We  put  on  overcoats  and  stamped 
our  feet. 

The  train  was  now  full  of  ravening  passengers.  And 
as  Elkhart  with  infinite  shyness  approached,  the  raven 
ing  passengers  formed  in  files  in  the  corridors,  and  their 
dignity  was  jerked  about  by  the  speed  of  the  icy  train, 
and  they  waited  and  waited,  like  mendicants  at  the 
kitchen  entrance  of  a  big  restaurant.  And  at  long  last, 
when  we  had  ceased  to  credit  that  any  such  place  as 
Elkhart  existed,  Elkhart  arrived.  Two  restaurant-cars 
were  coupled  on,  and,  as  it  were,  instantly  put  to  the 
sack  by  an  infuriated  soldiery.  The  food  was  excellent, 
and  newspapers  were  distributed  with  much  generosity, 
but  some  passengers,  including  ladies,  had  to  stand  for 
another  twenty  minutes  famished  at  the  door  of  the 
first  car,  because  the  breakfasting  accommodation  of 
this  particular  hotel  and  club  was  not  designed  on  the 
same  scale  as  its  bedroom  accommodation.  We  reached 
Chicago  one  hundred  and  ten  minutes  late.  And  to 
compensate  me  for  the  lateness,  and  for  the  refrigera 
tion,  and  for  the  starvation,  and  for  being  forced  to  eat 
my  breakfast  hurriedly  under  the  appealing,  reproach 
ful  gaze  of  famishing  men  and  women,  an  official  at  the 
Lasalle  station  was  good  enough  to  offer  me  a  couple 
of  dollars.  I  accepted  them.  .  .  . 

An  unfortunate  accident,  you  say.     It  would  be  more 

112 


TRANSIT    AND    HOTELS 

proper  to  say  a  series  of  accidents.  I  think  "the  great 
est  train  in  the  world"  is  entitled  to  one  accident,  but 
not  to  several.  And  when,  in  addition  to  being  a  train, 
it  happens  to  be  a  hotel  and  club,  and  not  an  experiment, 
I  think  that  a  system  under  which  a  serious  breakdown 
anywhere  between  Syracuse  and  Elkhart  (about  three- 
quarters  of  the  entire  journey)  is  necessarily  followed  by 
starvation — I  think  that  such  a  system  ought  to  be 
altered — by  Americans.  In  Europe  it  would  be  allowed 
to  continue  indefinitely. 

Beyond  question  my  experience  of  American  trains 
led  me  to  the  general  conclusion  that  the  best  of  them 
were  excellent.  Nevertheless,  I  saw  nothing  in  the 
organization  of  either  comfort,  luxury,  or  safety  to  justify 
the  strange  belief  of  Americans  that  railroad  traveling 
in  the  United  States  is  superior  to  railroad  traveling  in 
Europe.  Merely  from  habit,  I  prefer  European  trains  on 
the  whole.  It  is  perhaps  also  merely  from  habit  that 
Americans  prefer  American  trains. 

• 

As  regards  methods  of  transit  other  than  ordinary 
railroad  trains,  I  have  to  admit  a  certain  general  dis 
appointment  in  the  United  States.  The  Elevated  sys 
tems  in  the  large  cities  are  the  terrible  result  of  an  origi 
nal  notion  which  can  only  be  called  unfortunate.  They 
must  either  depopulate  the  streets  through  which  they 
run  or  utterly  destroy  the  sensibility  of  the  inhabitants ; 
and  they  enormously  increase  and  complicate  the  dan 
gers  of  the  traffic  beneath  them.  Indeed,  in  the  view 
of  the  unaccustomed  stranger,  every  Elevated  is  an 
affliction  so  appallingly  hideous  that  no  degree  of  con- 

8  113 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

venience  could  atone  for  its  horror.  The  New  York 
Subway  is  a  masterpiece  of  celerity,  and  in  other  ways 
less  evil  than  an  Elevated,  but  in  the  minimum  decencies 
of  travel  it  appeared  to  me  to  be  inferior  to  several 
similar  systems  in  Europe. 

The  surface-cars  in  all  the  large  cities  that  I  saw  were 
less  smart  and  less  effective  than  those  in  sundry  Euro 
pean  capitals.  In  Boston  particularly  I  cannot  forget 
the  excessive  discomfort  of  a  journey  to  Cambridge, 
made  in  the  company  of  a  host  who  had  a  most  beauti 
ful  house,  and  who  gave  dinners  of  the  last  refinement, 
but  who  seemed  unaccountably  to  look  on  the  car 
journey  as  a  sort  of  pleasant  robustious  outing.  Nor 
can  I  forget — also  in  Boston — the  spectacle  of  the  citi 
zens  of  Brookline — reputed  to  be  the  wealthiest  suburb 
in  the  world — strap-hanging  and  buffeted  and  flung 
about  on  the  way  home  from  church,  in  surface-cars 
which  really  did  carry  inadequacy  and  brutality  to 
excess. 

The  horse-cabs  of  Chicago  had  apparently  been  im 
ported  second-hand  immediately  after  the  great  fire 
from  minor  towns  in  Italy. 

There  remains  the  supreme  mystery  of  the  vices  of 
the  American  taxicab.  I  sought  an  explanation  of  this 
from  various  persons,  and  never  got  one  that  was  con 
vincing.  The  most  frequent  explanation,  at  any  rate 
in  New  York,  was  that  the  great  hotels  were  responsible 
for  the  vices  of  the  American  taxicab,  by  reason  of  their 
alleged  outrageous  charges  to  the  companies  for  the 
privilege  of  waiting  for  hire  at  their  august  porticos. 
I  listened  with  respect,  but  with  incredulity.  If  the 

114 


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TRANSIT   AND    HOTELS 

taxicabs  were  merely  very  dear,  I  could  understand; 
if  they  were  merely  very  bad,  I  could  understand;  if 
they  were  merely  numerically  insufficient  for  the  num 
ber  of  people  willing  to  pay  for  taxicabs,  I  could  under 
stand.  But  that  they  should  be  at  once  very  dear,  very 
bad,  and  most  inconveniently  scarce,  baffled  and  still 
baffles  me.  The  sum  of  real  annoyance  daily  inflicted 
on  a  rich  and  busy  but  craven-hearted  city  like  New 
York  by  the  eccentricity  of  its  taxicab  organization  must 
be  colossal. 

As  to  the  condition  of  the  roadways,  the  vocabulary 
of  blame  had  been  exhausted  long  before  I  arrived.  Two 
things,  however,  struck  me  in  New  York  which  I  had 
not  heard  of  by  report:  the  greasiness  of  the  streets, 
transforming  every  automobile  into  a  skidding  death 
trap  at  the  least  sign  of  moisture,  and  the  leisureliness 
of  the  road- works.  The  busiest  part  of  Thirty-fourth 
Street,  for  example — no  mean  artery,  either — was  torn 
up  when  I  came  into  New  York,  and  it  was  still  torn  up 
when  I  left.  And,  lastly,  why  are  there  no  island  re 
fuges  on  Fifth  Avenue?  Even  at  the  intersection  of 
Fifth  and  Broadway  there  is  no  oasis  for  the  pursued 
wayfarer.  Every  European  city  has  long  ago  decided 
that  the  provision  of  island  refuges  in  main  thorough 
fares  is  an  act  of  elementary  justice  to  the  wayfarer  in 
his  unequal  and  exhausting  struggle  with  wheeled  traffic. 

All  these  criticisms,  which  are  severe  but  honest,  would 
lose  much  of  their  point  if  the  general  efficiency  of  the 
United  States  and  its  delightful  genius  for  organization 
were  not  so  obvious  and  so  impressive  to  the  European. 
In  fact,  it  is  precisely  the  brilliant  practical  qualities  of 

* '5 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

the  country  which  place  its  idiosyncrasies  in  the  matter 
of  transit  in  so  startling  a  light.  ...  I  would  not  care  to 
close  this  section  without  a  grateful  reference  to  the  very 
natty  electric  coupes,  usually  driven  by  ladies,  which 
are  so  refreshing  a  feature  of  the  streets  of  Chicago,  and 
to  the  virtues  of  American  private  automobiles  in 

general. 

n 

It  is  remarkable  that  a  citizen  who  cheerfully  and 
negligently  submits  to  so  many  various  inconveniences 
outside  his  home  should  insist  on  having  the  most  com 
fortable  home  in  the  world,  as  the  American  citizen  un 
questionably  has!  Once,  when  in  response  to  an  inter 
viewer  I  had  become  rather  lyrical  in  praise  of  I  forget 
what  phenomenon  in  the  United  States,  a  Philadelphia 
evening  newspaper  published  an  editorial  article  in 
criticism  of  my  views.  This  article  was  entitled  "Offen 
sive  Flattery."  Were  I  to  say  freely  all  that  I  thought 
of  the  American  private  house,  large  or  small,  I  might 
expose  myself  again  to  the  same  accusation. 

When  I  began  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  Ameri 
can  private  house,  I  felt  like  one  who,  son  of  an  exiled 
mother,  had  been  born  abroad  and  had  at  length  en 
tered  his  real  country.  That  is  to  say,  I  felt  at  home. 
I  felt  that  all  this  practical  comfort  and  myself  had  been 
specially  destined  for  each  other  since  the  beginning  of 
time,  and  that  fate  was  at  last  being  fulfilled.  Freely 
I  admit  that  until  I  reached  America  I  had  not  under 
stood  what  real  domestic  comfort,  generously  conceived, 
could  be.  Certainly  I  had  always  in  this  particular 
quarreled  with  my  own  country,  whose  average  notion 

116 


THE  PASSENGERS  ON  THE  ELEVATED  AT  NIGHT  ARE  ODDLY  ASSORTED 


TRANSIT   AND    HOTELS 

of  comfort  still  is  to  leave  the  drawing-room  (tempera 
ture  70° — near  the  fire)  at  midnight,  pass  by  a  wind 
swept  hall  and  staircase  (temperature  55°)  to  a  bedroom 
full  of  fine  fresh  air  (temperature  50°  to  40°),  and  in  that 
chamber,  having  removed  piece  by  piece  every  bit  of 
warm  clothing,  to  slip,  imperfectly  protected,  between 
icy  sheets  and  wait  for  sleep.  Certainly  I  had  always 
contested  the  joyfulness  of  that  particular  process;  but 
my  imagination  had  fallen  short  of  the  delicious  innu 
merable  realities  of  comfort  in  an  American  home. 

Now,  having  regained  the  "barbaric  seats"  whence 
I  came,  I  read  with  a  peculiar  expression  the  advertise 
ments  of  fashionable  country  and  town  residences  to 
rent  or  for  sale  in  England.  Such  as:  "Choice  resi 
dence.  Five  reception-rooms.  Sixteen  bedrooms.  Bath 
room — "  Or:  "Thoroughly  up-to-date  mansion.  Six 
reception-rooms.  Splendid  hall.  Billiard-room.  Twenty- 
four  bedrooms.  Two  bath-rooms — "  I  read  this  litera 
ture  (to  be  discovered  textually  every  week  in  the  best 
illustrated  weeklies) ,  and  I  smile.  Also  I  wonder,  faintly 
blushing,  what  Americans  truly  do  think  of  the  resi 
dential  aspects  of  European  house-property  when  they 
first  see  it.  And  I  wonder,  without  blushing,  to  what 
miraculous  degree  of  perfected  comfort  Americans  would 
raise  all  their  urban  traffic  if  only  they  cared  enough  to 
keep  the  professional  politician  out  of  their  streets  as 
strictly  as  they  keep  him  out  of  their  houses. 

« 

The  great  American  hotel,  too,  is  a  wondrous  haven 
for  the  European  who  in  Europe  has  only  tasted  com 
fort  in  his  dreams.  The  calm  orderliness  of  the  bed- 

117 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

room  floors,  the  adequacy  of  wardrobes  and  lamps,  the 
reckless  profusion  of  clean  linen,  that  charming  notice 
which  one  finds  under  one's  door  in  the  morning,  "You 
were  called  at  seven-thirty,  and  answered,"  the  funda 
mental  principle  that  a  bedroom  without  a  bath-room 
is  not  a  bedroom,  the  magic  laundry  which  returns  your 
effects  duly  starched  in  eight  hours,  the  bells  which  are 
answered  immediately,  the  thickness  of  the  walls,  the 
radiator  in  the  elevator-shaft,  the  celestial  invention  of 
the  floor-clerk — I  could  catalogue  the  civilizing  features 
of  the  American  hotel  for  pages.  But  the  great  Ameri 
can  hotel  is  a  classic,  and  to  praise  it  may  seem  inept. 
My  one  excuse  for  doing  so  is  that  I  have  ever  been  a 
devotee  of  hotels,  and  once  indeed  wrote  a  whole  book 
about  one.  When  I  told  the  best  interviewer  in  the 
United  States  that  my  secret  ambition  had  always  been 
to  be  the  manager  of  a  grand  hotel,  I  was  quite  sincere. 
And  whenever  I  saw  the  manager  of  a  great  American 
hotel  traversing  with  preoccupied  and  yet  aquiline  glance 
his  corridors  and  public  rooms,  I  envied  him  acutely. 

The  hospitality  of  those  corridors  and  public  rooms  is 
so  wide  and  comprehensive  that  the  ground  floor  and 
mezzanine  of  a  really  big  hotel  in  the  United  States  offer 
a  spectacle  of  humanity  such  as  cannot  be  seen  in 
Europe;  they  offer  also  a  remarkable  contrast  to  the 
tranquillity  of  their  own  upper  stories,  where  any  eccen 
tricity  is  vigorously  discouraged.  I  think  that  it  must 
be  the  vast  tumult  and  promiscuity  of  the  ground  floor 
which  is  responsible  for  the  relative  inferiority  of  the 
restaurant  in  a  great  American  hotel.  A  restaurant 
should  be  a  paramount  unit,  but  as  a  fact  in  these  hotels 

118, 


THE    RESTAURANT    OF   A    GREAT    HOTEL    IS    BUT    ONE    FEATURE    OF    ITS 

SPLENDOR 


TRANSIT   AND    HOTELS 

it  is  no  more  than  an  item  in  a  series  of  resorts,  several 
of  which  equal  if  they  do  not  surpass  it  in  popular  in 
terest.  The  Americans,  I  found,  would  show  more  in 
terest  in  the  barber-shop  than  in  the  restaurant.  (And 
to  see  the  American  man  of  business,  theoretically  in  a 
hurry,  having  his  head  bumped  about  by  a  hair-cutter, 
his  right  hand  tended  by  one  manicurist,  his  left  hand 
tended  by  another  manicurist,  his  boots  polished  by  a 
lightning  shiner,  and  his  wits  polished  by  the  two  mani 
curists  together — the  whole  simultaneously — this  spec 
tacle  in  itself  was  possibly  a  reflection  on  the  American's 
sense  of  proportion.)  Further,  a  restaurant  should  be  a 
sacred  retreat,  screened  away  from  the  world;  which  ideal 
is  foreign  to  the  very  spirit  of  the  great  American  hotel. 
I  do  not  complain  that  the  representative  celebrated 
restaurants  fail  to  achieve  an  absolutely  first-class  cuisine. 
No  large  restaurant,  either  in  the  United  States  or  out 
of  it,  can  hope  to  achieve  an  absolutely  first-class  cui 
sine.  The  peerless  restaurant  is  and  must  be  a  little  one. 
Nor  would  I  specially  complain  of  the  noise  and  throng 
ing  of  the  great  restaurants,  the  deafening  stridency  of 
their  music,  the  artistic  violence  of  their  decorations; 
these  features  of  fashionable  restaurants  are  now  uni 
versal  throughout  the  world,  and  the  philosopher  adapts 
himself  to  them.  (Indeed,  in  favor  of  New  York  I 
must  say  that  in  one  of  the  largest  of  its  restaurants  I 
heard  a  Chopin  ballade  well  played  on  a  good  piano — 
and  it  was  listened  to  in  appreciative  silence;  event 
quite  unique  in  my  experience.  Also,  the  large  restau 
rant  whose  cuisine  nearest  approaches  the  absolutely 
first-class  is  in  New  York,  and  not  in  Europe.) 

119 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

Nor  would  I  complain  that  the  waiter  in  the  great  res 
taurant  neither  understands  English  nor  speaks  a  tongue 
which  resembles  English,  for  this  characteristic,  too,  is 
very  marked  across  the  Atlantic.  (One  night,  in  a  Bos 
ton  hotel,  after  lingual  difficulties  with  a  head- waiter, 
I  asked  him  in  French  if  he  was  not  French.  He  cut 
tingly  replied  in  waiter's  American:  "I  was  French, 
but  now  I  am  an  American."  In  another  few  years 
that  man  will  be  referring  to  Great  Britain  as  "the  old 
country.")  .  .  . 

No;  what  disconcerts  the  European  in  the  great 
American  restaurant  is  the  excessive,  the  occasionally 
maddening  slowness  of  the  service,  and  the  lack  of  in 
terest  in  the  service.  Touching  the  latter  defect,  the 
waiter  is  not  impolite;  he  is  not  neglectful.  But  he  is, 
too  often,  passively  hostile,  or,  at  best,  neutral.  He,  or 
his  chief,  has  apparently  not  grasped  the  fact  that  buy 
ing  a  meal  is  not  like  buying  a  ton  of  coal.  If  the  pur 
chaser  is  to  get  value  for  his  money,  he  must  enjoy  his 
meal;  and  if  he  is  to  enjoy  the  meal,  it  must  not  merely 
be  efficiently  served,  but  it  must  be  efficiently  served 
in  a  sympathetic  atmosphere.  The  supreme  business 
of  a  good  waiter  is  to  create  this  atmosphere.  .  .  .  True, 
that  even  in  the  country  which  has  carried  cookery  and 
restaurants  to  loftier  heights  than  any  other — I  mean, 
of  course,  Belgium,  the  little  country  of  little  restau 
rants — the  subtle  ether  which  the  truly  civilized  diner 
demands  is  rare  enough.  But  in  the  great  restaurants 
of  the  great  cities  of  America  it  is,  I  fancy,  rarer  than 
anywhere  else. 


VI 
SPORT    AND    THE    THEATER 


VI 

SPORT  AND   THE   THEATER 

I  REMEMBER  thinking,  long  before  I  came  to  the 
United  States,  at  the  time  when  the  anti-gambling 
bill  was  a  leading  topic  of  American  correspondence  in 
European  newspapers,  that  a  State  whose  public  opin 
ion  would  allow  even  the  discussion  of  a  regulation  so 
drastic  could  not  possibly  regard  " sport"  as  sport  is 
regarded  in  Europe.  It  might  be  very  fond  of  gam 
bling,  but  it  could  not  be  afflicted  with  the  particular 
mania  which  in  Europe  amounts  to  a  passion,  if  not 
to  a  religion.  And  when  the  project  became  law,  and 
horse-racing  was  most  beneficially  and  admirably  abol 
ished  in  the  northeastern  portion  of  the  Republic,  I  was 
astonished.  No  such  law  could  be  passed  in  any  Euro 
pean  country  that  I  knew.  The  populace  would  not 
suffer  it;  the  small,  intelligent  minority  would  not  care 
enough  to  support  it ;  and  the  wealthy  oligarchical  priest- 
patrons  of  sport  would  be  seriously  convinced  that  it 
involved  the  ruin  of  true  progress  and  the  end  of  all 
things.  Such  is  the  sacredness  of  sport  in  Europe, 
where  governments  audacious  enough  to  attack  and  over 
throw  the  state-church  have  never  dared  to  suggest 
the  suppression  of  the  vice  by  which  alone  the  main 
form  of  sport  lives.  .  .  . 

So  that  I  did  not  expect  to  find  the  United  States  a 

123 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

very  "sporting"  country.  And  I  did  not  so  find  it. 
I  do  not  wish  to  suggest  that,  in  my  opinion,  there  is  no 
"sport "  in  the  United  States,  but  only  that  there  is  some 
what  less  than  in  Western  Europe;  as  I  have  already 
indicated,  the  differences  between  one  civilization  and 
another  are  always  slight,  though  they  are  invariably 
exaggerated  by  rumor. 

I  know  that  the  "sporting  instinct" — a  curious  com 
bination  of  the  various  instincts  for  fresh  air,  destruc 
tion,  physical  prowess,  emulation,  devotion,  and  betting 
— is  tolerably  strong  in  America.  I  could  name  a  list 
of  American  sports  as  long  as  the  list  of  dutiable  articles 
in  the  customs  tariff.  I  am  aware  that  over  a  million 
golf  balls  are  bought  (and  chiefly- lost)  in  the  United 
States  every  year.  I  know  that  no  residence  there  is 
complete  without  its  lawn-tennis  court.  I  accept  the 
statement  that  its  hunting  is  unequaled.  I  have  ad 
mired  the  luxury  and  completeness  of  its  country  clubs. 
Its  yachting  is  renowned.  Its  horse-shows,  to  which  en 
thusiasts  repair  in  automobiles,  are  wondrous  displays 
of  fashion.  But  none  of  these  things  is  democratic; 
none  enters  into  the  life  of  the  mass  of  the  people. 
Nor  can  that  fierce  sport  be  called  quite  democratic 
which  depends  exclusively  upon,  and  is  limited  to,  the 
universities.  A  six-day  cycling  contest  and  a  Presiden 
tial  election  are,  of  course,  among  the  very  greatest 
sporting  events  in  the  world,  but  they  do  not  occur 
often  enough  to  merit  consideration  as  constant  factors 
of  national  existence. 

Baseball  remains  a  formidable  item,  yet  scarcely  ca 
pable  of  balancing  the  scale  against  the  sports — football, 

124 


SPORT   AND    THE   THEATER 

cricket,  racing,  pelota,  bull-fighting — which,  in  Europe, 
impassion  the  common  people,  and  draw  most  of  their 
champions  from  the  common  people.  In  Europe  the 
advertisement  hoardings — especially  in  the  provinces- 
proclaim  sport  throughout  every  month  of  the  year; 
not  so  in  America.  In  Europe  the  most  important  daily 
news  is  still  the  sporting  news,  as  any  editor  will  tell  you; 
not  so  in  America,  despite  the  gigantic  headings  of  the 
evening  papers  at  certain  seasons. 

But  how  mighty,  nevertheless,  is  baseball!  Its  fame 
floats  through  Europe  as  something  prodigious,  incom 
prehensible,  romantic,  and  terrible.  After  being  en 
tertained  at  early  lunch  in  the  correct  hotel  for  this 
kind  of  thing,  I  was  taken,  in  a  state  of  great  excitement, 
by  a  group  of  excited  business  men,  and  flashed  through 
Central  Park  in  an  express  automobile  to  one  of  the 
great  championship  games.  I  noted  the  excellent  ar 
rangements  for  dealing  with  feverish  multitudes.  I 
noted  the  splendid  and  ornate  spaciousness  of  the  grand 
stand  crowned  with  innumerable  eagles,  and  the  calm, 
matter-of-fact  tone  in  which  a  friend  informed  me  that 
the  grand-stand  had  been  burned  down  six  months  ago. 
I  noted  the  dreadful  prominence  of  advertisements,  and 
particularly  of  that  one  which  announced  "the  3 -dollar 
hat  with  the  5-dollar  look,"  all  very  European!  It  was 
pleasant  to  be  convinced  in  such  large  letters  that  even 
shrewd  America  is  not  exempt  from  that  universal 
human  naivete  which  is  ready  to  believe  that  in  some 
magic  emporium  a  philanthropist  is  always  waiting  to 
give  five  dollars'  worth  of  goods  in  exchange  for  three 
dollars  of  money. 

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YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

Then  I  braced  my  intelligence  to  an  understanding  of 
the  game,  which,  thanks  to  its  classical  simplicity,  and 
to  some  training  in  the  finesse  of  cricket  and  football,  I 
did  soon  grasp  in  its  main  outlines.  A  beautiful  game, 
superbly  played.  We  reckon  to  know  something  of 
ball  games  in  Europe;  we  reckon  to  be  connoisseurs; 
and  the  old  footballer  and  cricketer  in  me  came  away 
from  that  immense  inclosure  convinced  that  baseball 
was  a  game  of  the  very  first  class,  and  that  those  players 
were  the  most  finished  exponents  of  it.  I  was  informed 
that  during  the  winter  the  players  condescended  to  fol 
low  the  law  and  other  liberal  professions.  But,  judging 
from  their  apparent  importance  in  the  public  eye,  I 
should  not  have  been  surprised  to  learn  that  during  the 
winter  they  condescended  to  be  Speakers  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  or  governors  of  States.  It  was  a  re 
lief  to  know  that  in  the  matter  of  expenses  they  were 
treated  more  liberally  than  the  ambassadors  of  the 
Republic. 

They  seemed  to  have  carried  the  art  of  pitching  a  ball 
to  a  more  wondrous  degree  of  perfection  than  it  has 
ever  been  carried  in  cricket.  The  absolute  certitude  of 
the  fielding  and  accuracy  of  the  throwing  was  profoundly 
impressive  to  a  connoisseur.  Only  in  a  certain  lack  of 
elegance  in  gesture,  and  in  the  unshaven  dowdiness  of 
the  ground  on  which  it  was  played,  could  this  game  be 
said  to  be  inferior  to  the  noble  spectacle  of  cricket.  In 
broad  dramatic  quality  I  should  place  it  above  cricket, 
and  on  a  level  with  Association  football. 

In  short,  I  at  once  became  an  enthusiast  for  baseball. 
For  nine  innings  I  watched  it  with  interest  unabated, 

126 


SPORT    AND    THE    THEATER 

until  a  vast  purple  shadow,  creeping  gradually  eastward, 
had  obscurely  veiled  the  sublime  legend  of  the  3 -dollar 
hat  with  the  5 -dollar  look.  I  began  to  acquire  the  prop 
er  cries  and  shouts  and  menaces,  and  to  pass  comments 
on  the  play  which  I  was  assured  were- not  utterly  foolish. 
In  my  honest  yearning  to  feel  myself  a  habitue,  I  did 
what  everybody  else  did  and  even  attacked  a  morsel 
of  chewing-gum;  but  all  that  a  European  can  say  of 
this  singular  substance  is  that  it  is,  finally,  eternal  and 
unconquerable.  One  slip  I  did  quite  innocently  make. 
I  rose  to  stretch  myself  after  the  sixth  inning  instead  of 
half-way  through  the  seventh.  Happily  a  friend  with 
marked  presence  of  mind  pulled  me  down  to  my  seat 
again,  before  I  had  had  time  fully  to  commit  this  hor 
rible  sacrilege.  When  the  game  was  finished  I  surged 
on  to  the  enormous  ground,  and  was  informed  by  inner- 
ring  experts  of  a  few  of  the  thousand  subtle  tactical 
points  which  I  had  missed.  And  lastly,  I  was  flung  up 
onto  the  Elevated  platform,  littered  with  pieces  of  news 
paper,  and  through  a  landscape  of  slovenly  apartment- 
houses,  punctuated  by  glimpses  of  tremendous  quantities 
of  drying  linen,  I  was  shot  out  of  New  York  toward  a 
calm  week-end. 

Yes,  a  grand  game,  a  game  entirely  worthy  of  its 
reputation!  If  the  professional  matador  and  gladiator 
business  is  to  be  carried  on  at  all,  a  better  exemplifica 
tion  of  it  than  baseball  offers  could  hardly  be  found  or 
invented.  But  the  beholding  crowd,  and  the  behavior 
of  the  crowd,  somewhat  disappointed  me.  My  friends 
said  with  intense  pride  that  forty  thousand  persons  were 
present.  The  estimate  proved  to  be  an  exaggeration ;  but 

'  127 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

even  had  it  not  been,  what  is  forty  thousand  to  the  similar 
crowds  in  Europe  ?  In  Europe  forty  thousand  people  will 
often  assemble  to  watch  an  ordinary  football  match. 
And  for  a  "Final,"  the  record  stands  at  something  over 
a  hundred  thousand.  It  should  be  remembered,  too,  in 
forming  the  comparison,  that  many  people  in  the  Eastern 
States  frequent  the  baseball  grounds  because  they  have 
been  deprived  of  their  horse-racing.  Further,  the  New 
York  crowd,  though  fairly  excited,  was  not  excited  as 
sporting  excitement  is  understood  in,  for  instance,  the 
Five  Towns.  The  cheering  was  good,  but  it  was  not 
the  cheering  of  frenzied  passion.  The  anathemas, 
though  hearty,  lacked  that  religious  sincerity  which  a 
truly  sport-loving  populace  will  always  put  into  them. 
The  prejudice  in  favor  of  the  home  team,  the  cruel, 
frank  unfairness  toward  the  visiting  team,  were  both 
insufficiently  accentuated.  The  menaces  were  merely 
infantile.  I  inquired  whether  the  referee  or  umpire, 
or  whatever  the  arbiter  is  called  in  America,  ever  went 
in  danger  of  life  or  limb,  or  had  to  be  protected  from  a 
homicidal  public  by  the  law  in  uniform.  And  I  was 
shocked  by  a  negative  answer.  Referees  in  Europe 
have  been  smuggled  off  the  ground  in  the  center  of  a 
cocoon  of  policemen,  have  even  been  known  to  spend  a 
fortnight  in  bed,  after  giving  a  decision  adverse  to  the 
home  team!  .  .  .  More  evidence  that  the  United  States 
is  not  in  the  full  sense  a  sporting  country! 

• 

Of  the  psychology  of  the  great  common  multitude  of 
baseball  "bleachers,"  I  learned  almost  nothing.  But 
as  regards  the  world  of  success  and  luxury  (which,  of 

128 


SPORT   AND   THE   THEATER 

course,  held  me  a  willing  captive  firmly  in  its  soft  and 
powerful  influence  throughout  my  stay),  I  should  say 
that  there  was  an  appreciable  amount  of  self -hypno 
tism  in  its  attitude  toward  baseball.  As  if  the  thriving 
and  preoccupied  business  man  murmured  to  his  soul, 
when  the  proper  time  came:  "By  the  way,  these  base 
ball  championships  are  approaching.  It  is  right  and 
good  for  me  that  I  should  be  boyishly  excited,  and  I  will 
be  excited.  I  must  not  let  my  interest  in  baseball  die. 
Let's  look  at  the  sporting-page  and  see  how  things  stand. 
And  I'll  have  to  get  tickets,  too!"  Hence  possibly  what 
seemed  to  me  a  superficiality  and  factitiousness  in  the 
excitement  of  the  more  expensive  seats,  and  a  too-rapid 
effervescence  and  finish  of  the  excitement  when  the  game 
was  over. 

The  high  fever  of  inter-university  football  struck  me 
as  a  more  authentic  phenomenon.  Indeed,  a  university 
town  in  the  throes  of  an  important  match  offers  a 
psychological  panorama  whose  genuineness  can  scarcely 
be  doubted.  Here  the  young  men  communicate  the 
sacred  contagion  to  their  elders,  and  they  also  communi 
cate  it  to  the  young  women,  who,  in  turn,  communicate 
it  to  the  said  elders — and  possibly  the  indirect  method 
is  the  surer!  I  visited  a  university  town  in  order  to 
witness  a  match  of  the  highest  importance.  Unfortu 
nately,  and  yet  fortunately,  my  whole  view  of  it  was 
affected  by  a  mere  nothing — a  trifle  which  the  news 
papers  dealt  with  in  two  lines. 

When  I  reached  the  gates  of  the  arena  in  the  morning, 
to  get  a  glimpse  of  a  freshmen's  match,  an  automobile 
was  standing  thereat.  In  the  automobile  was  a  pile  of 
9  129 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

rugs,  and  sticking  out  of  the  pile  of  rugs  in  an  odd,  un 
natural,  horizontal  way  was  a  pair  of  muddy  football 
boots.  These  boots  were  still  on  the  feet  cf  a  boy,  but 
all  the  rest  of  his  unconscious  and  smashed  body  was 
hidden  beneath  the  rugs.  The  automobile  vanished, 
and  so  did  my  peace  of  mind.  It  seemed  to  me  tragic 
that  that  burly  infant  under  the  rugs  should  have  been 
martyrized  at  a  poor  little  morning  match  in  front  of  a 
few  sparse  hundreds  of  spectators  and  tens  of  thousands 
of  unresponsive  empty  benches.  He  had  not  had  even 
the  glory  and  meed  of  a  great  multitude's  applause. 
When  I  last  inquired  about  him,  at  the  end  of  the  day, 
he  was  still  unconscious,  and  that  was  all  that  could  be 
definitely  said  of  him ;  one  heard  that  it  was  his  features 
that  had  chiefly  suffered  in  the  havoc,  that  he  had  been 
defaced.  If  I  had  not  happened  to  see  those  muddy  foot 
ball  boots  sticking  out,  I  should  have  heard  vaguely  of 
the  accident,  and  remarked  philosophically  that  it  was 
a  pity,  but  that  accidents  would  occur,  and  there  would 
have  been  the  end  of  my  impression.  Only  I  just  did 
happen  to  see  those  muddy  boots  sticking  out. 

When  we  came  away  from  the  freshmen's  match,  the 
charming  roads  of  the  town,  bordered  by  trees  and  by 
the  agreeable  architecture  of  mysterious  clubs,  were  be 
ginning  to  be  alive  and  dangerous  with  automobiles  and 
carriages,  and  pretty  girls  and  proud  men,  and  flags  and 
flowers,  and  colored  favors  and  shoutings.  Salutes  were 
being  exchanged  at  every  yard.  The  sense  of  a  mighty 
and  culminating  event  sharpened  the  air.  The  great 
inn  was  full  of  jollity  and  excitement,  and  the  reception- 
clerks  thereof  had  the  negligent  mien  of  those  who  know 

130 


THE   SENSE   OF   A   MIGHTY   AND  CULMINATING   EVENT   SHARPENED   THE   AIR 


SPORT   AND    THE   THEATER 

that  every  bedroom  is  taken  and  every  table  booked. 
The  club  (not  one  of  the  mysterious  ones,  but  an  in 
genuous  plain  club  of  patriarchs  who  had  once  been 
young  in  the  university  and  were  now  defying  time) 
was  crammed  with  amiable  confusion,  and  its  rich  car 
pets  protected  for  the  day  against  the  feet  of  bald  lads, 
who  kept  aimlessly  walking  up-stairs  and  down-stairs 
and  from  room  to  room,  out  of  mere  friendly  exuberance. 
And  after  the  inn  and  the  club  I  was  conducted  into 
a  true  American  home,  where  the  largest  and  most  free 
hospitality  was  being  practised  upon  a  footing  of  uni 
versal  intimacy.  You  ate  standing;  you  ate  sitting; 
you  ate  walking  the  length  of  the  long  table;  you  ate 
at  one  small  table,  and  then  you  ate  at  another.  You 
talked  at  random  to  strangers  behind  and  strangers  be 
fore.  And  when  you  couldn't  think  of  anything  to  say, 
you  just  smiled  inclusively.  You  knew  scarcely  any 
body's  name,  but  the  heart  of  everybody.  Impossible  to 
be  ceremonious!  When  a  young  woman  bluntly  in 
quired  the  significance  of  that  far-away  look  in  your 
eye,  impossible  not  to  reply  frankly  that  you  were  dream 
ing  of  a  second  helping  of  a  marvelous  pie  up  there  at 
the  end  of  the  long  table;  and  impossible  not  to  eat  all 
the  three  separate  second  helpings  that  were  instantly 
thrust  upon  you !  The  chatter  and  the  good-nature  were 
enormous.  This  home  was  an  expression  of  the  democ 
racy  of  the  university  at  its  best.  Fraternity  was  abroad ; 
kindliness  was  abroad;  and  therefore  joy.  Whatever 
else  was  taught  at  the  university,  these  were  taught, 
and  they  were  learnt.  If  a  publicist  asked  me  what 
American  civilization  had  achieved,  I  would  answer  that 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

among  other  things  it  had  achieved  this  hour  in  this 
modest  home. 

Occasionally  a  face  would  darken  and  a  voice  grow 
serious,  exposing  the  terrible  secret  apprehensions,  based 
on  expert  opinion,  that  the  home  side  could  not  win. 
But  the  cloud  would  pass.  And  occasionally  there  would 
be  a  reference  to  the  victim  whose  muddy  boots  I  had 
seen.  "Dreadful,  isn't  it?"  and  a  twinge  of  compassion 
for  the  victim  or  for  his  mother!  But  the  cloud  would 
immediately  pass. 

And  then  we  all  had  to  leave,  for  none  must  be  late 
on  this  solemn  and  gay  occasion.  And  now  the  roads 
were  so  many  converging  torrents  of  automobiles  and 
carriages,  and  excitement  had  developed  into  fever. 
Life  was  at  its  highest,  and  the  world  held  but  one  prob 
lem.  .  .  .  Sign  that  reaction  was  approaching! 

A  proud  spectacle  for  the  agitated  vision,  when  the 
vast  business  of  filling  the  stands  had  been  accomplished, 
and  the  eye  ranged  over  acres  of  black  hats  and  varie 
gated  hats,  hats  flowered  and  feathered,  and  plain  male 
caps — a  carpet  intricately  patterned  with  the  rival 
colors!  At  a  signal  the  mimic  battle  began.  And  in  a 
moment  occurred  the  first  casualty — most  grave  of  a 
series  of  casualties.  A  pale  hero,  with  a  useless  limb, 
was  led  off  the  field  amid  loud  cheers.  Then  it  was 
that  I  became  aware  of  some  dozens  of  supplementary 
heroes  shivering  beneath  brilliant  blankets, under  the  lee 
of  the  stands.  In  this  species  of  football  every  casualty 
was  foreseen,  and  the  rules  allowed  it  to  be  repaired. 
Not  two  teams,  but  two  regiments,  were,  in  fact,  fight 
ing.  And  my  European  ideal  of  sport  was  offended. 

132 


SPORT   AND    THE    THEATER 

Was  it  possible  that  a  team  could  be  permitted  to  re 
place  a  wounded  man  by  another,  and  so  on  ad  infinitumf 
Was  it  possible  that  a  team  need  not  abide  by  its  mis 
fortunes  ?  Well,  it  was !  I  did  not  like  this.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  the  organizers,  forgetting  that  this  was  a 
mimic  battle,  had  made  it  into  a  real  battle,  and  that 
there  was  an  imperfect  appreciation  of  what  strictly 
amateur  sport  is.  The  desire  to  win,  laudable  and  essen 
tial  in  itself,  may  by  excessive  indulgence  become  a 
morbid  obsession.  Surely,  I  thought,  and  still  think, 
the  means  ought  to  suit  the  end!  An  enthusiast  for 
American  organization,  I  was  nevertheless  forced  to 
conclude  that  here  organization  is  being  carried  too  far, 
outraging  the  sense  of  proportion  and  of  general  fitness. 
For  me,  such  organization  disclosed  even  a  misappre 
hension  as  to  the  principal  aim  and  purpose  of  a  uni 
versity.  If  ever  the  fate  of  the  Republic  should  depend 
on  the  result  of  football  matches,  then  such  organiza 
tion  would  be  justifiable,  and  courses  of  intellectual 
study  might  properly  be  suppressed.  Until  that  dread 
hour  I  would  be  inclined  to  dwell  heavily  on  the  ad 
mitted  fact  that  a  football  match  is  not  Waterloo,  but 
simply  a  transient  game  in  which  two  sets  of  youngsters 
bump  up  against  one  another  in  opposing  endeavors 
to  put  a  bouncing  toy  on  two  different  spots  of  the 
earth's  surface.  The  ultimate  location  of  the  inflated 
bauble  will  not  affect  the  national  destiny,  and  such 
moral  value  as  the  game  has  will  not  be  increased  but 
diminished  by  any  enlargement  of  organization.  After 
all,  if  the  brains  of  the  world  gave  themselves  exclusive 
ly  to  football  matches,  the  efficiency  of  football  matches 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

would  be  immensely  improved — but  what  then?  ...  I 
seemed  to  behold  on  this  field  the  American  passion  for 
" getting  results" — which  I  admire  very  much;  but  it 
occurred  to  me  that  that  passion,  with  its  eyes  fixed 
hungrily  on  the  result  it  wants,  may  sometimes  fail  to 
see  that  it  is  getting  a  number  of  other  results  which  it 
emphatically  doesn't  want. 

Another  example  of  excessive  organization  presented 
itself  to  me  in  the  almost  military  arrangements  for 
shrieking  the  official  yells.  I  was  sorry  for  the  young 
men  whose  duty  it  was,  by  the  aid  of  megaphones  and 
of  grotesque  and  undignified  contortions,  to  encourage 
and  even  force  the  spectators  to  emit  in  unison  the  com 
plex  noises  which  constitute  the  yell.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  my  pity  was  misdirected,  for  these  young  men  were 
obviously  content  with  themselves;  still,  I  felt  sorry 
for  them.  Assuming  for  an  instant  that  the  official  yell 
is  not  monstrously  absurd  and  surpassingly  ugly,  ad 
mitting  that  it  is  a  beautiful  series  of  sounds,  enhearten- 
ing,  noble,  an  utterance  worthy  of  a  great  and  ancient 
university  at  a  crisis,  even  then  one  is  bound  to  remember 
that  its  essential  quality  should  be  its  spontaneity.  En 
thusiasm  cannot  be  created  at  the  word  of  command, 
nor  can  heroes  be  inspired  by  cheers  artificially  pro 
duced  under  megaphonic  intimidation.  Indeed,  no 
moral  phenomenon  could  be  less  hopeful  to  heroes  than 
a  perfunctory  response  to  a  military  order  for  enthusiasm. 
Perfunctory  responses  were  frequent.  Partly,  no  doubt, 
because  the  imperious  young  men  with  megaphones 
would  not  leave  us  alone.  Just  when  we  were  nicely 
absorbed  in  the  caprices  of  the  ball  they  would  call  us 


THE    VICTORS    LEAVING    THE    FIELD 


SPORT   AND   THE   THEATER 

off  and  compel  us  to  execute  their  preposterous  chorus; 
and  we — the  spectators — did  not  always  like  it. 

And  the  difficulty  of  following  the  game  was  already 
acute  enough!  Whenever  the  play  quickened  in  inter 
est  we  stood  up.  In  fact,  we  were  standing  up  and 
sitting  down  throughout  the  afternoon.  And  as  we  all 
stood  up  and  we  all  sat  down  together,  nobody  gained 
any  advantage  from  these  muscular  exercises.  We  saw 
no  better,  and  we  saw  no  worse.  Toward  the  end  we 
stood  on  the  seats,  with  the  same  result.  We  behaved 
in  exactly  the  child-like  manner  of  an  Italian  audience 
at  a  fashionable  concert.  And  to  crown  all,  an  aviator 
had  the  ineffably  bad  taste  and  the  culpable  foolhardi- 
ness  to  circle  round  and  round  within  a  few  dozen  yards 
of  our  heads. 

In  spite  of  all  this,  the  sum  of  one's  sensations  amount 
ed  to  lively  pleasure.  The  pleasure  would  have  been 
livelier  if  university  football  were  a  better  game  than 
in  candid  truth  it  is.  At  this  juncture  I  seem  to  hear 
a  million  voices  of  students  and  ex-students  roaring  out 
at  me  with  menaces  that  the  game  is  perfect  and  the 
greatest  of  all  games.  A  national  game  always  was  and 
is  perfect.  This  particular  game  was  perfect  years  ago. 
Nevertheless,  I  learned  that  it  had  recently  been  im 
proved,  in  deference  to  criticisms.  Therefore,  it  is  now 
pluperfect.  I  was  told  on  the  field  —  and  sharply  - 
that  experience  of  it  was  needed  for  the  proper  apprecia 
tion  of  its  finesse.  Admitted!  But  just  as  devotees  of 
a  favorite  author  will  put  sublime  significances  into  his 
least  phrase,  so  will  devotees  of  (a  game  put  marvels 
of  finesse  into  its  clumsiest  features.  The  process  is 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

psychological.  I  was  new  to  this  particular  game,  but 
I  had  been  following  various  footballs  with  my  feet  or 
with  my  eyes  for  some  thirty  years,  and  I  was  not  to  be 
bullied  out  of  my  opinion  that  the  American  university 
game,  though  goodish,  lacked  certain  virtues.  Its  char 
acteristics  tend  ever  to  a  too  close  formation,  and  in 
evitably  favor  tedium  and  monotony.  In  some  aspects 
an  unemotional  critic  might  occasionally  be  tempted 
to  call  it  naive  and  barbaric.  But  I  was  not  unemotional. 
I  recognize,  and  in  my  own  person  I  proved,  that  as  a 
vehicle  for  emotion  the  American  university  game  will 
serve.  What  else  is  such  a  game  for?  In  the  match 
I  witnessed  there  were  some  really  great  moments,  and 
one  or  two  masterly  exhibitions  of  skill  and  force.  And 
as  "my  "  side  won,  against  all  odds,  I  departed  in  a  state 

of  felicity. 

• 

If  the  great  cities  of  the  East  and  Middle  West  are  not 
strikingly  sportive,  perhaps  the  reason  is  that  they  are 
impassioned  theater-goers ;  they  could  not  well  be  both, 
at  any  rate  without  neglecting  the  financial  pursuits 
which  are  their  chief  real  amusement  and  hobby.  I 
mention  the  theaters  in  connection  with  sports,  rather 
than  in  connection  with  thwarts,  because  the  American 
drama  is  more  closely  related  to  sporting  diversions  than 
to  dramatic  art.  If  this  seems  a  hard  saying,  I  will  add 
that  I  am  ready  to  apply  it  with  similiar  force  to  the 
English  and  French  drama,  and,  indeed,  to  almost  all 
modern  drama  outside  Germany.  It  was  astonishing 
to  me  that  America,  unhampered  by  English  traditions, 
should  take  seriously,  for  instance,  the  fashionable  and 


SPORT   AND   THE   THEATER 

utterly  meretricious  French  dramatists,  who  receive 
nothing  but  a  chilly  ridicule  from  people  of  genuine 
discrimination  in  Paris.  Whatever  American  drama 
tists  have  to  learn,  they  will  not  learn  it  in  Paris;  and 
I  was  charmed  once  to  hear  a  popular  New  York  play 
wright,  one  who  sincerely  and  frankly  wrote  for  money 
alone,  assert  boldly  that  the  notoriously  successful 
French  plays  were  bad,  and  clumsily  bad.  It  was  a 
proof  of  taste.  As  a  rule,  one  finds  the  popular  play 
wright  taking  off  his  hat  to  contemporaries  who  at  best 
are  no  better  than  his  equals. 

A  few  minor  cases  apart,  the  drama  is  artistically 
negligible  throughout  the  world;  but  if  there  is  a  large 
hope  for  it  in  any  special  country,  that  country  is  the 
United  States.  The  extraordinary  prevalence  of  big 
theaters,  the  quickly  increasing  number  of  native 
dramatists,  the  enormous  profits  of  the  successful  ones 
— it  is  simply  inconceivable  in  the  face  of  the  phenomena, 
and  of  the  educational  process  so  rapidly  going  on,  that 
serious  and  first-class  creative  artists  shall  not  arise  in 
America.  Nothing  is  more  likely  to  foster  the  produc 
tion  of  first-class  artists  than  the  existence  of  a  vast 
machinery  for  winning  money  and  glory.  When  I  re 
flect  that  there  are  nearly  twice  as  many  first-class 
theaters  in  New  York  as  in  London,  and  that  a  very 
successful  play  in  New  York  plays  to  eighteen  thousand 
dollars  a  week,  while  in  London  ten  thousand  dollars  a 
week  is  enormous,  and  that  the  American  public  has  a 
preference  for  its  own  dramatists,  I  have  little  fear  for 
the  artistic  importance  of  the  drama  of  the  future  in 
America.  And  from  the  discrepancy  between  my  own 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

observations  and  the  observations  of  a  reliable  Euro 
pean  critic  in  New  York  only  five  years  ago,  I  should 
imagine  that  appreciable  progress  had  already  been  made, 
though  I  will  not  pretend  that  I  was  much  impressed  by 
the  achievements  up  to  date,  either  of  playwrights, 
actors,  or  audiences.  A  huge  popular  institution,  how 
ever,  such  as  the  American  theatrical  system,  is  always 
interesting  to  the  amateur  of  human  nature. 

The  first  thing  noted  by  the  curious  stranger  in  Ameri 
can  theaters  is  that  American  theatrical  architects  have 
made  a  great  discovery — namely,  that  every  member  of 
the  audience  goes  to  the  play  with  a  desire  to  be  able 
to  see  and  hear  what  passes  on  the  stage.  This  happy 
American  discovery  has  not  yet  announced  itself  in 
Europe,  where  in  almost  every  theater  seats  are  im 
pudently  sold,  and  idiotically  bought,  from  which  it  is 
impossible  to  see  and  hear  what  passes  on  the  stage. 
(A  remarkable  continent,  Europe!)  Apart  from  this 
most  important  point,  American  theaters  are  not,  either 
without  or  within,  very  attractive.  The  auditoriums,  to 
a  European,  have  a  somewhat  dingy  air.  Which  air  is 
no  doubt  partly  due  to  the  non-existence  of  a  rule  in 
favor  of  evening  dress  (never  again  shall  I  gird  against 
the  rule  in  Europe!),  but  it  is  due  also  to  the  oddly  in 
efficient  illumination  during  the  entr'actes,  and  to  the 
unsatisfactory  schemes  of  decoration. 

The  interior  of  a  theater  ought  to  be  magnificent,  sug 
gesting  pleasure,  luxury,  and  richness;  it  ought  to  create 
an  illusion  of  rather  riotous  grandeur.  The  rare  archi 
tects  who  have  understood  this  seem  to  have  lost  their 
heads  about  it,  with  such  wild  and  capricious  results  as 

138 


SPORT   AND   THE    THEATER 

the  new  opera-house  in  Philadelphia.  I  could  not  re 
strain  my  surprise  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  Quaker 
City  had  not  arisen  with  pickaxes  and  razed  this  archi 
tectural  extravaganza  to  the  ground.  But  Philadelphia 
is  a  city  startlingly  unlike  its  European  reputation. 
Throughout  my  too-brief  sojourn  in  it  I  did  not  cease 
to  marvel  at  its  liveliness.  I  heard  more  picturesque 
and  pyrotechnic  wit  at  one  luncheon  in  Philadelphia 
than  at  any  two  repasts  outside  it.  The  spacious  gaiety 
and  lavishness  of  its  marts  enchanted  me.  It  must  have 
a  pretty  weakness  for  the  most  costly  old  books  and 
manuscripts.  I  never  was  nearer  breaking  the  Sixth 
Commandment  than  in  one  of  its  homes,  where  the 
Countess  of  Pembroke's  own  copy  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney's 
Arcadia — a  unique  and  utterly  un-Quakerish  treasure- 
was  laid  trustfully  in  my  hands  by  the  regretted  and 
charming  Harry  Widener. 

To  return.  The  Metropolitan  Opera-House  in  New 
York  is  a  much  more  satisfactory  example  of  a  theatrical 
interior.  Indeed,  it  is  very  fine,  especially  when  strung 
from  end  to  end  of  its  first  tier  with  pearls,  as  I  saw  it. 
Impossible  to  find  fault  with  its  mundane  splendor. 
And  let  me  urge  that  impeccable  mundane  splendor, 
despite  facile  arguments  to  the  contrary,  is  a  very  real 
and  worthy  achievement.  It  is  regrettable,  by  the  way, 
that  the  entrances  and  foyers  to  these  grandiose  interiors 
should  be  so  paltry,  slatternly,  and  inadequate.  If  the 
entrances  to  the  great  financial  establishments  reminded 
me  of  opera-houses,  the  entrances  to  opera-houses  did 
not! 

Artistically,  of  course,  the  spectacle  of  a  grand-opera 

139 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

season  in  an  American  city  is  just  as  humiliating  as  it 
is  in  the  other  Anglo-Saxon  country.  It  was  discon 
certing  to  see  Latin  or  German  opera  given  exactly — 
with  no  difference  at  all;  same  Latin  or  German  artists 
and  conductors,  same  conventions,  same  tricks — in 
New  York  or  Philadelphia  as  in  Europe.  And  though 
the  wealthy  audiences  behaved  better  than  wealthy 
audiences  at  Covent  Garden  (perhaps  because  the  boxes 
are  less  like  inclosed  pews  than  in  London),  it  was  morti 
fying  to  detect  the  secret  disdain  for  art  which  was  ex 
pressed  in  the  listless  late  arrivings  and  the  relieved 
early  departures.  The  which  disdain  for  art  was,  how 
ever,  I  am  content  to  think,  as  naught  in  comparison 
with  the  withering  artistic  disdain  felt,  and  sometimes 
revealed,  by  those  Latin  and  German  artists  for  Anglo- 
Saxon  Philistinism.  I  seem  to  be  able  to  read  the  sar 
castic  souls  of  these  accomplished  and  sensitive  aliens, 
when  they  assure  newspaper  reporters  that  New  York, 
Chicago,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  and  London  are  really 
musical.  The  sole  test  of  a  musical  public  is  that  it 
should  be  capable  of  self-support — I  mean  that  it  should 
produce  a  school  of  creative  and  executive  artists  of  its 
own,  whom  it  likes  well  enough  to  idolize  and  to  enrich, 
and  whom  the  rest  of  the  world  will  respect.  This  is 
a  test  which  can  be  safely  applied  to  Germany,  Russia, 
Italy,  and  France.  And  in  certain  other  arts  it  is  a  test 
which  can  be  applied  to  Anglo-Saxondom — but  not  in 
music.  In  America  and  England  music  is  still  mainly 
a  sportive  habit. 

When  I  think  of  the  exoticism  of  grand  opera  in  New 
York,  my  mind  at  once  turns,  in  contrast,  to  the  natural 

140 


SPORT   AND    THE    THEATER 

raciness  of  such  modest  creations  as  those  offered  by 
Mr.  George  Cohan  at  his  theater  on  Broadway.  Here,  in 
an  extreme  degree,  you  get  a  genuine  instance  of  a  pub 
lic  demand  producing  the  desired  artist  on  the  spot. 
Here  is  something  really  and  honestly  and  respectably 
American.  And  why  it  should  be  derided  by  even  the 
most  lofty  pillars  of  American  taste,  I  cannot  imagine. 
(Or  rather,  I  can  imagine  quite  well.)  For  myself,  I 
spent  a  very  agreeable  evening  in  witnessing  "The  Little 
Millionaire."  I  was  perfectly  conscious  of  the  blatancy 
of  the  methods  that  achieved  it.  I  saw  in  it  no  mark 
of  genius.  But  I  did  see  in  it  a  very  various  talent  and 
an  all-round  efficiency;  and,  beneath  the  blatancy,  an 
admirable  direct  simplicity  and  winning  unpretentious- 
ness.  I  liked  the  ingenuity  of  the  device  by  which,  in 
the  words  of  the  programme,  the  action  of  Act  II  was 
"not  interrupted  by  musical  numbers."  The  dramatic 
construction  of  this  act  was  so  consistently  clever  and 
right  and  effective  that  more  ambitious  dramatists 
might  study  it  with  advantage.  Another  point  — 
though  the  piece  was  artistically  vulgar,  it  was  not 
vulgar  otherwise.  It  contained  no  slightest  trace  of  the 
outrageous  salacity  and  sottishness  which  disfigure  the 
great  majority  of  successful  musical  comedies.  It  was 
an  honest  entertainment.  But  to  me  its  chief  value  and 
interest  lay  in  the  fact  that  while  watching  it  I  felt  that 
I  was  really  in  New  York,  and  not  in  Vienna,  Paris,  or 
London. 

Of  the  regular  theater  I  did  not  see  nearly  enough  to  be 
able  to  generalize  even  for  my  own  private  satisfaction. 
I  observed,  and  expected  to  observe,  that  the  most  re- 

141 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

actionary  quarters  were  the  most  respected.  It  is  the 
same  everywhere.  When  a  manager,  having  discovered 
that  two  real  clocks  in  one  real  room  never  strike 
simultaneously,  put  two  real  clocks  on  the  stage,  and 
made  one  strike  after  the  other;  or  when  a  manager 
mimicked,  with  extraordinary  effects  of  restlessness,  a 
life-sized  telephone-exchange  on  the  stage — then  was  I 
bound  to  hear  of  "artistic  realism"  and  "a  fine  pro 
duction"!  But  such  feats  of  truthfulness  do  not  con 
sort  well  with  chocolate  sentimentalities  and  wilful  fal 
sities  of  action  and  dialogue.  They  caused  me  to  doubt 
whether  I  was  not  in  London. 

The  problem-plays  which  I  saw  were  just  as  futile 
and  exasperating  as  the  commercial  English  and  French 
varieties  of  the  problem-play,  though  they  had  a  trifling 
advantage  over  the  English  in  that  their  most  sentiment 
al  passages  were  lightened  by  humor,  and  the  odiously 
insincere  felicity  of  their  conclusions  was  left  to  the 
imagination  instead  of  being  acted  ruthlessly  out  on  the 
boards.  The  themes  of  these  plays  showed  the  usual 
obsession,  and  were  manipulated  in  the  usual  attempt 
to  demonstrate  that  the  way  of  transgressors  is  not  so 
very  hard  after  all.  They  threw,  all  unconsciously, 
strange  side-lights  on  the  American  man's  private  esti 
mate  of  the  American  woman,  and  the  incidence  of  the 
applause  was  extremely  instructive. 

The  most  satisfactory  play  that  I  saw,  "Bought  and 
Paid  For,"  by  George  Broadhurst,  was  not  a  problem- 
play,  though  Mr.  Broadhurst  is  also  a  purveyor  of  prob 
lem-plays.  It  was  just  an  unpretentious  fairy-tale  about 
the  customary  millionaire  and  the  customary  poor  girl. 

143 


SPORT    AND    THE    THEATER 

The  first  act  was  maladroit,  but  the  others  made  me 
think  that  "Bought  and  Paid  For"  was  one  of  the  best 
popular  commercial  Anglo-Saxon  plays  I  had  ever  seen 
anywhere.  There  were  touches  of  authentic  realism 
at  the  very  crisis  at  which  experience  had  taught  one 
to  expect  a  crass  sentimentality.  The  fairy-tale  was 
well  told,  with  some  excellent  characterization,  and  very 
well  played.  Indeed,  Mr.  Frank  Craven's  rendering 
of  the  incompetent  clerk  was  a  masterly  and  unforget 
table  piece  of  comedy.  I  enjoyed  "Bought  and  Paid 
For,"  and  it  is  on  the  faith  of  such  plays,  imperfect  and 
timid  as  they  are,  that  I  establish  my  prophecy  of  a 
more  glorious  hereafter  for  the  American  drama. 


VII 
EDUCATION    AND    ART 


i..'SS«-v 


BREAKFAST   EN   ROUTE 


VII 

EDUCATION  AND   ART 

1HAD  my  first  glimpses  of  education  in  America  from 
the  purser  of  an  illustrious  liner,  who  affirmed  the 
existence  of  a  dog — in  fact,  his  own  dog — so  highly 
educated  that  he  habitually  followed  and  understood 
human  conversations,  and  that  in  order  to  keep  secrets 
from  the  animal  it  was  necessary  to  spell  out  the  key 
word  of  a  sentence  instead  of  pronouncing  it.  After 
this  I  seemed  somehow  to  be  prepared  for  the  American 
infant  who,  when  her  parents  discomfited  her  just  curi 
osity  by  the  same  mean  adult  dodge  of  spelling  words, 
walked  angrily  out  of  the  room  with  the  protest: 
"There's  too  blank  much  education  in  this  house  for 
me!"  Nevertheless,  she  proudly  and  bravely  set  her 
self  to  learn  to  spell;  whereupon  her  parents  descended 
to  even  worse  depths  of  baseness,  and  in  her  presence 
would  actually  whisper  in  each  other's  ear.  She  merely 
inquired,  with  grimness:  "What's  the  good  of  being 
educated,  anyway?  First  you  spell  words,  and  when  I 
can  spell  then  you  go  and  whisper!"  And  received  no 
adequate  answer,  naturally. 

This  captivating  creature,  whose  society  I  enjoyed  at 
frequent  intervals  throughout  my  stay  in  America,  was 
a  mirror  in  which  I  saw  the  whole  American  race  of 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

children — their  independence,  their  self-confidence,  their 
adorable  charm,  and  their  neat  sauciness.  "What  is 
father?"  she  asked  one  day.  Now  her  father  happened 
to  be  one  of  the  foremost  humorists  in  the  United  States ; 
she  was  baldly  informed  that  he  was  a  humorist.  "What 
is  a  humorist?"  she  went  on,  ruthlessly,  and  learned  that 
a  humorist  was  a  person  who  wrote  funny  things  to  make 
people  laugh.  "Well,"  she  said,  "I  don't  honestly 
think  he's  very  funny  at  home."  It  was  naught  to  her 
that  humorists  are  not  paid  to  be  funny  at  home,  and 
that  in  truth  they  never  under  any  circumstances  are 
very  funny  at  home.  She  just  hurled  her  father  from 
his  niche — and  then  went  forth  and  boasted  of  him  as  \\ 
a  unique  peculiarity  in  fathers,  as  an  unrivaled  orna 
ment  of  her  career  on  earth;  for  no  other  child  in  the 
vicinity  had  a  professional  humorist  for  parent.  Her 
gestures  and  accent  typified  for  me  the  general  attitude 
of  youngest  America,  in  process  of  education,  toward 
the  older  generation :  an  astonishing,  amusing,  exquisite, 
incomprehensible  mixture  of  affection,  admiration,  trust, 
and  rather  casual  tolerating  scorn.  The  children  of 
most  countries  display  a  similar  phenomenon,  but  in 
America  the  phenomenon  is  more  acute  and  disconcert 
ing  than  elsewhere. 

One  noon,  in  perfect  autumn  weather,  I  was  walking 
down  the  main  road  of  a  residential  suburb,  and  observ 
ing  the  fragile-wheeled  station-wagons,  and  the  ice- 
wagons  enormously  labeled  "DANGER"  (perhaps  by  the 
gastric  experts  of  the  medical  faculty),  and  the  Colonial- 
style  dwellings,  and  the  "tinder"  boarding-houses,  and 
the  towering  boot-shine  stands,  and  the  roast-chestnut 

148 


EDUCATION   AND   ART 

emporia,  and  the  gasometers  flanking  a  noble  and  beau 
tiful  river — I  was  observing  all  this  when  a  number 
of  young  men  and  maids  came  out  of  a  high-school  and 
unconsciously  assumed  possession  of  the  street.  It  was 
a  great  and  impressive  sight;  it  was  a  delightful  sight. 
They  were  so  sure  of  themselves,  the  maids  particularly; 
so  interested  in  themselves,  so  happy,  so  eager,  so  con 
vinced  (without  any  conceit)  that  their  importance  tran 
scended  all  other  importances,  so  gently  pitiful  toward 
men  and  women  of  forty-five,  and  so  positive  that  the 
main  function  of  elders  was  to  pay  school-fees,  that  I  was 
thrilled  thereby.  Seldom  has  a  human  spectacle  given 
me  such  exciting  pleasure  as  this  gave.  (And  they  never 
suspected  it,  those  preoccupied  demigods!)  It  was  the 
sheer  pride  of  life  that  I  saw  passing  down  the  street  and 
across  the  badly  laid  tram-lines !  I  had  never  seen  any 
thing  like  it.  I  immediately  desired  to  visit  schools.  Pro 
foundly  ignorant  of  educational  methods,  and  with  a 
strong  distaste  for  teaching,  I  yet  wanted  to  know  and  un 
derstand  all  about  education  in  America  in  one  moment — 
the  education  that  produced  that  superb  stride  and  car 
riage  in  the  street!  I  failed,  of  course,  in  my  desire — 
not  from  lack  of  facilities  offered,  but  partly  from  lack 
of  knowledge  to  estimate  critically  what  I  saw,  and  from 
lack  of  time.  My  experiences,  however,  though  they 
left  my  mind  full  of  enigmas,  were  wondrous.  I  asked 
to  inspect  one  of  the  best  schools  in  New  York.  Had  I 
been  a  dispassionate  sociological  student,  I  should  prob 
ably  have  asked  to  inspect  one  of  the  worst  schools  in 
New  York — perhaps  one  of  the  gaunt  institutions  to  be 
found,  together  with  a  cinema-palace  and  a  bank,  in  al- 

149 


YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

most  every  block  on  the  East  Side.     But  I  asked  for  one 
of  the  best,  and  I  was  shown  the  Horace  Mann  School. 

« 

The  Horace  Mann  School  proved  to  be  a  palace  where 
a  thousand  children  and  their  teachers  lived  with  ex 
treme  vivacity  in  an  atmosphere  of  ozone  from  which 
all  draughts  and  chilliness  had  been  eliminated.  As  a 
malcontent  native  of  the  Isle  of  Chilly  Draughts,  this 
attribute  of  the  atmosphere  of  the  Horace  Mann  School 
impresssd  me.  Dimensionally  I  found  that  the  palace 
had  a  beginning  but  no  end.  I  walked  through  leagues 
of  corridors  and  peeped  into  unnumbered  class-rooms, 
in  each  of  which  children  were  apparently  fiercely  drag 
ging  knowledge  out  of  nevertheless  highly  communica 
tive  teachers;  and  the  children  got  bigger  and  bigger, 
and  then  diminished  for  a  while,  and  then  grew  again, 
and  kept  on  growing,  until  I  at  last  entered  a  palatial 
kitchen  where  some  two  dozen  angels,  robed  in  white 
but  for  the  moment  uncrowned,  were  eagerly  crowding 
round  a  paradisiacal  saucepan  whose  magic  contents 
formed  the  subject  of  a  lecture  by  one  of  them.  Now 
these  angels  were  not  cherubs;  they  were  full  grown; 
they  never  would  be  any  taller  than  they  were;  and  I 
asked  up  to  what  age  angels  were  kept  at  school  in 
America.  Whereupon  I  learned  that  I  had  insensibly 
passed  from  the  school  proper  into  a  training-school  for 
teachers;  but  at  what  point  the  school  proper  ended  I 
never  did  learn.  It  seems  to  me  that  if  I  had  penetrated 
through  seven  more  doors  I  should  have  reached  Colum 
bia  University  itself,  without  having  crossed  a  definite  di- ! 
viding-line ;  and,  anyhow,  the  circumstance  was  symbolic. 

150 


EDUCATION   AND    ART 

Reluctantly  I  left  the  incredible  acres  of  technical 
apparatus  munificently  provided  in  America  for  the 
training  of  teachers,  and,  having  risen  to  the  roof  and 
seen  infants  thereon  grabbing  at  instruction  in  the  New 
York  breeze,  I  came  again  to  the  more  normal  regions 
of  the  school.  Here,  as  everywhere  else  in  the  United 
States  (save  perhaps  the  cloak-room  department  of  the 
Metropolitan  Opera -House),  what  chiefly  struck  me 
was  the  brilliant  organization  of  the  organism.  There 
was  nothing  that  had  not  been  thought  of.  A  hand 
somely  dressed  mother  came  into  the  organism  and  got 
as  far  as  the  antechamber  of  the  principal's  room.  The 
organization  had  foreseen  her,  had  divined  that  that 
mother's  child  was  the  most  important  among  a  thousand 
children — indeed,  the  sole  child  of  any  real  importance 
— had  arranged  that  her  progress  should  be  arrested  at 
just  that  stage,  and  had  stationed  a  calm  and  diplomatic 
woman  to  convince  her  that  her  child  was  indeed  the 
main  preoccupation  of  the  Horace  Mann  School.  A 
pretty  sight — the  interview!  It  charmed  me  as  the 
sight  of  an  ingenious  engine  in  motion  will  charm  an 
engineer. 

The  individual  class-rooms,  in  some  of  which  I  lin 
gered  at  leisure,  were  tonic,  bracing,  inspiring,  and  made 
me  ashamed  because  I  was  not  young.  I  saw  geog 
raphy  being  taught  with  the  aid  of  a  stereoscopic  magic- 
lantern.  After  a  view  of  the  high  street  of  a  village  in 
North  Russia  had  been  exposed  and  explained  by  a  pupil, 
the  teacher  said:  "If  anybody  has  any  questions  to  ask, 
let  him  stand  up."  And  the  whole  class  leaped  furious 
ly  to  its  feet,  blotting  out  the  entire  picture  with  black 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

shadows  of  craniums  and  starched  pinafores.  The 
whole  class  might  have  been  famishing.  In  another 
room  I  saw  the  teaching  of  English  composition.  Al 
though  when  I  went  to  school  English  composition  was 
never  taught,  I  have  gradually  acquired  a  certain  in 
terest  in  the  subject,  and  I  feel  justified  in  asserting  that 
the  lesson  was  admirably  given.  It  was,  in  fact,  the 
best  example  of  actual  pedagogy  that  I  met  with  in 
the  United  States.  "Now  can  any  one  tell  me — "  began 
the  mistress.  A  dozen  arms  of  boys  and  girls  shot  up 
with  excessive  violence,  and,  having  shot  up,  they  wig 
gled  and  waggled  with  ferocious  impatience  in  the  air; 
it  was  a  miracle  that  they  remained  attached  to  their 
respective  trunks;  it  was  assuredly  an  act  of  daring  on 
the  part  of  the  intrepid  mistress  to  choose  between  them. 

"How  children  have  changed  since  my  time!"  I  said 
to  the  principal  afterward.  "We  never  used  to  fling  up 
our  hands  like  that.  We  just  put  them  up.  .  .  .  But 
perhaps  it's  because  they're  Americans — " 

"It's  probably  because  of  the  ventilation,"  said  the 
principal,  calmly  corrective.  "We  never  have  the  win 
dows  open  winter  or  summer,  but  the  ventilation  is 
perfect." 

I  perceived  that  it  indeed  must  be  because  of  the 
ventilation. 

More  and  more  startled,  as  I  went  along,  by  the 
princely  lavishness  of  every  arrangement,  I  ventured  to 
surmise  that  it  must  all  cost  a  great  deal. 

"The  fees  are  two  hundred  and  eighty-five  dollars 
in  the  Upper  School." 

"Yes,  I  expected  they  would  be  high,"  I  said. 

152. 


EDUCATION    AND    ART 

"Not  at  all.  They  are  the  lowest  in  New  York. 
Smart  private  schools  will  charge  five  or  six  hundred 
dollars  a  year." 

Exhausted,  humbled,  I  at  last  quitted  the  warmed 
Horace  Mann  ozone  for  the  harsh  and  searching  atmos 
phere  of  the  street.  And  I  gazed  up  at  the  pile,  and  saw 
all  its  interiors  again  in  my  mind.  I  had  not  grasped 
the  half  nor  the  quarter  of  what  had  been  so  willingly 
and  modestly  shown  to  me.  I  had  formed  no  theory  as 
to  the  value  of  some  of  the  best  juvenile  education  in 
the  Eastern  States.  But  I  had  learned  one  thing.  I 
knew  the  secret  of  the  fine,  proud  bearing  of  young 
America.  A  child  is  not  a  fool;  a  child  is  almost  al 
ways  uncannily  shrewd.  And  when  it  sees  a  splendid 
palace  provided  for  it,  when  it  sees  money  being  showered 
upon  hygienic  devices  for  its  comfort,  even  upon  trifles 
for  its  distraction,  when  it  sees  brains  all  bent  on  dis 
covering  the  best,  nicest  ways  of  dealing  with  its  in 
stincts,  when  it  sees  itself  the  center  of  a  magnificent 
pageant,  ritual,  devotion,  almost  worship,  it  naturally 
lifts  its  chin,  puts  its  shoulders  back,  steps  out  with  a 
spring,  and  glances  down  confidently  upon  the  whole 

world.     Who  wouldn't? 

« 

It  was  an  exciting  day  for  me  when  I  paid  a  call  next 
door  to  Horace  Mann  and  visited  Columbia  University. 
For  this  was  my  first  visit  of  inspection  to  any  univer 
sity  of  any  kind,  either  in  the  New  World  or  in  the  Old. 
As  for  an  English  university  education,  destiny  had  de 
prived  me  of  its  advantages  and  of  its  perils.  I  could  not 
haughtily  compare  Columbia  with  Oxford  or  Cambridge, 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

because  I  had  never  set  foot  even  in  their  towns.     I  had 
no  standards  whatever  of  comparison. 

I  arose  and  went  out  to  lunch  on  that  morning,  and 
left  the  lunch  before  anybody  else  and  rushed  in  an  auto 
mobile  to  Columbia;  but  football  had  already  begun  for 
the  day  in  the  campus  costing  two  million  dollars,  and 
classes  were  over.  I  saw  five  or  more  universities  while 
I  was  in  America,  but  I  was  not  clever  enough  to  catch 
one  of  them  in  the  act  of  instruction.  What  I  did  see 
was  the  formidable  and  magnificent  machine,  the  ap 
paratus  of  learning,  supine  in  repose. 

And  if  the  spectacle  was  no  more  than  a  promise, 
it  was  a  very  dazzling  promise.  No  European  with  any 
imagination  could  regard  Columbia  as  other  than  a 
miracle.  Nearly  the  whole  of  the  gigantic  affair  ap 
peared  to  have  been  brought  into  being,  physically,  in 
less  than  twenty  years.  Building  after  building,  device 
after  device,  was  dated  subsequent  to  1893.  And  to 
my  mind  that  was  just  the  point  of  the  gigantic  affair. 
Universities  in  Europe  are  so  old.  And  there  are  uni 
versities  in  America  which  are  venerable.  A  graduate 
of  the  most  venerable  of  them  told  me  that  Columbia 
was  not  ''really"  a  university.  Well,  it  did  seem  unreal, 
though  not  in  his  sense;  it  seemed  magic.  The  graduate 
in  question  told  me  that  a  university  could  not  be  created 
by  a  stroke  of  the  wand.  And  yet  there  staring  me  in 
the  face  was  the  evidence  that  a  university  not  merely 
could  be  created  by  a  stroke  of  the  wand,  but  had  been. 
(I  am  aware  of  Columbia's  theoretic  age  and  of  her  in 
sistence  on  it.)  The  wand  is  a  modern  invention;  to 
deny  its  effective  creative  faculty  is  absurd. 

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EDUCATION   AND    ART 

Of  course  I  know  what  the  graduate  meant.  I  my 
self,  though  I  had  not  seen  Oxford  nor  Cambridge,  was 
in  truth  comparing  Columbia  with  my  dream  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge,  to  her  disadvantage.  I  was  capable 
of  saying  to  myself:  "All  this  is  terribly  new.  All  this 
lacks  tradition."  Criticism  fatuous  and  mischievous, 
if  human!  It  would  be  as  sapient  to  imprison  the  en 
tire  youth  of  a  country  until  it  had  ceased  to  commit 
the  offense  of  being  young.  Tradition  was  assuredly 
not  apparent  in  the  atmosphere  of  Columbia.  More 
over,  some  of  her  architecture  was  ugly.  On  the  other 
hand,  some  of  it  was  beautiful  to  the  point  of  nobility. 
The  library,  for  instance :  a  building  in  which  no  univer 
sity  and  no  age  could  feel  anything  but  pride.  And  far 
more  important  than  stone  or  marble  was  the  passion 
ate  affection  for  Columbia  which  I  observed  in  certain 
of  her  sons  who  had  nevertheless  known  other  univer 
sities.  A  passionate  affection  also  perhaps  brought  into 
being  since  1893,  but  not  to  be  surpassed  in  honest 
fervency  and  loyalty  by  influences  more  venerable! 

Columbia  was  full  of  piquancies  for  me.  It  delighted 
me  that  the  Dean  of  Science  was  also  consulting  engineer 
to  the  university.  That  was  characteristic  and  fine. 
And  how  splendidly  unlike  Oxford!  I  liked  the  com 
plete  life-sized  railroad  locomotive  in  the  engineering- 
shops,  and  the  Greek  custom  in  the  baths;  and  the 
students'  notion  of  coziness  in  the  private  dens  full  of 
shelves,  photographs,  and  disguised  beds;  and  the 
-A  visibility  of  the  president;  and  his  pronounced  views 
as  to  the  respective  merits  of  New  York  newspapers; 
and  the  eagerness  of  a  young  professor  of  literature  in 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

the  Faculty  Club  to  defend  against  my  attacks  English 
Professor  A.  C.  Bradley.  I  do  believe  that  I  even  liked 
the  singular  sight  of  a  Chinaman  tabulating  from  the 
world's  press,  in  the  modern-history  laboratory,  a  his 
tory  of  the  world  day  by  day.  I  can  hardly  conceive 
a  wilder,  more  fearfully  difficult  way  of  trying  to  acquire 
the  historical  sense  than  this  voyaging  through  hot, 
fresh  newspapers,  nor  one  more  probably  destined  to 
failure  (I  should  have  liked  to  see  some  of  the  two- 
monthly  resumes  which  students  in  this  course  are 
obliged  to  write);  but  I  liked  the  enterprise  and  the 
originality  and  the  daring  of  the  idea;  I  liked  its  disdain 
of  tradition.  And,  after  all,  is  it  weirder  than  the 
common  traditional  method? 

To  the  casual  visitor,  such  as  myself,  unused  either 
to  universities  or  to  the  vastness  of  the  American  scale, 
Columbia  could  be  little  save  an  enormous  and  over 
whelming  incoherence.  It  so  chiefly  remains  in  my 
mind.  But  the  ingenious  humanity  running  through 
the  whole  conception  of  it  was  touching  and  memorable. 
And  although  I  came  away  from  my  visit  still  perfectly 
innocent  of  any  broad  theory  as  to  ultimate  educational 
values  in  America,  I  came  away  also  with  a  deeper  and 
more  reassuring  conviction  that  America  was  intensely 
interested  in  education,  and  that  all  that  America  had 
to  do  in  order  to  arrive  at  real  national,  racial  results 
was  to  keep  on  being  intensely  interested.  When  Amer 
ica  shall  have  so  far  outclassed  Europe  as  to  be  able  to 
abolish,  in  university  examinations,  what  New  York 
picturesquely  calls  "the  gumshoe  squad"  (of  course  now 
much  more  brilliantly  organized  in  America  than  in 

156 


UNIVERSITY    BUILDINGS UNIVERSITY    OF    PENNSYLVANIA 


EDUCATION   AND    ART 

Europe),  then  we  shall  begin  to  think  that,  under  the 
stroke  of  the  wand,  at  least  one  real  national,  racial 

result  has  been  attained! 

« 

When  I  set  eyes  on  the  sixty  buildings  which  con 
stitute  the  visible  part  of  Harvard  University,  I  per 
ceived  that,  just  as  Kensington  had  without  knowing  it 
been  imitating  certain  streets  of  Boston,  so  certain  lost 
little  old  English  towns  that  even  American  tourists 
have  not  yet  reached  had  without  knowing  it  been 
imitating  the  courts  and  chimneys  and  windows  and 
doorways  and  luscious  brickwork  of  Harvard.  Har 
vard  had  a  very  mellow  look  indeed.  No  trace  of  the 
wand!  The  European  in  search  of  tradition  would  find 
it  here  in  bulk.  I  should  doubt  whether  at  Harvard 
modern  history  is  studied  through  the  daily  paper — 
unless  perchance  it  be  in  Harvard's  own  daily  paper. 
The  considerableness  of  Harvard  was  attested  for  me 
by  the  multiplicity  of  its  press  organs.  I  dare  say  that 
Harvard  is  the  only  university  in  the  world  the  offices 
of  whose  comic  paper  are  housed  in  a  separate  and  im 
portant  building.  If  there  had  been  a  special  press- 
building  for  Harvard's  press,  I  should  have  been  startled. 
But  when  I  beheld  the  mere  comic  organ  in  a  spacious 
and  costly  detached  home  that  some  London  dailies 
would  envy,  I  was  struck  dumb.  That  sole  fact  indi 
cated  the  scale  of  magnificence  at  Harvard,  and  proved 
that  the  phenomenon  of  gold-depreciation  has  pro 
ceeded  further  at  Harvard  than  at  any  other  public 
institution  in  the  world. 

The  etiquette  of  Harvard  is  nicely  calculated  to 

157 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

heighten  the  material  splendor  of  the  place.  Thus  it  is 
etiquette  for  the  president,  during  his  term  of  office,  to 
make  a  present  of  a  building  or  so  to  the  university. 
Now  buildings  at  Harvard  have  adopted  the  excellent 
habit  of  never  costing  less  than  about  half  a  million 
dollars.  It  is  also  etiquette  that  the  gifts  to  the  univer 
sity  from  old  students  shall  touch  a  certain  annual  sum ; 
they  touch  it.  Withal,  there  is  no  architectural  osten 
tation  at]  Harvard.  All  the  buildings  are  artistically 
modest;  many  are  beautiful;  scarcely  one  that  clashes 
with  the  sober  and  subtle  attractiveness  of  the  whole 
aggregation.  Nowhere  is  the  eye  offended.  One  looks 
upon  the  crimson  fagades  with  the  same  lenient  love  as 
marks  one's  attitude  toward  those  quaint  and  lovely 
English  houses  (so  familiar  to  American  visitors  to  our 
isle)  that  are  all  picturesqueness  and  no  bath-room. 
That  is  the  external  effect.  Assuredly  entering  some  of 
those  storied  doorways,  one  would  anticipate  incon 
veniences  and  what  is  called  "Old  World  charm" 
within. 

But  within  one  discovers  simply  naught  but  the  very 
latest,  the  very  dearest,  the  very  best  of  everything  that 
is  luxurious.  I  was  ushered  into  a  most  princely  apart 
ment,  grandiose  in  dimensions,  superbly  furnished  and 
decorated,  lighted  with  rich  discretion,  heated  to  a  turn. 
Portraits  by  John  Sargent  hung  on  the  vast  walls,  and 
a  score  of  other  manifestations  of  art  rivaled  these  in 
the  attention  of  the  stranger.  No  club  in  London  could 
match  this  chamber.  It  was,  I  believe,  a  sort  of  lounge 
for  the  students.  Anyhow,  a  few  students  were  loun 
ging  in  it ;  only  a  few — there  was  no  rush  for  the  privilege. 

158 


EDUCATION    AND    ART 

And  the  few  loungers  were  really  lounging,  in  the  wonder 
ful  sinuous  postures  of  youth.  They  might  have  been 
lounging  in  a  railway  station  or  a  barn  instead  of  amid 
portraits  by  John  Sargent. 

The  squash-racket  court  was  an  example  of  another 
kind  of  luxury,  very  different  from  the  cunning  combi 
nations  of  pictured  walls,  books,  carved  wood,  and  deep- 
piled  carpets,  but  not  less  authentic.  The  dining-hall 
seating  a  thousand  simultaneously  was  another.  Here 
I  witnessed  the  laying  of  dinner-tables  by  negroes.  I 
noted  that  the  sudden  sight  of  me  instantly  convinced 
one  negro,  engaged  in  the  manipulation  of  pats  of  but 
ter,  that  a  fork  would  be  more  in  keeping  with  the 
Harvard  tradition  than  his  fingers,  and  I  was  humanly 
glad  thus  to  learn  that  the  secret  reality  of  table-laying 
is  the  same  in  two  continents.  I  saw  not  the  dining 
of  the  thousand.  In  fact,  I  doubt  whether  in  all  I  saw 
one  hundred  of  the  six  thousand  students.  They  had 
mysteriously  vanished  from  all  the  resorts  of  perfect 
luxury  provided  for  them.  Possibly  they  were  with 
drawn  into  the  privacies  of  the  thousands  of  suites — 
each  containing  bedroom,  sitting-room,  bath-room,  and 
telephone — which  I  understood  are  allotted  to  them  for 
lairs.  I  left  Harvard  with  a  very  clear  impression  of 
its  frank  welcoming  hospitality  and  of  its  extraordinary 
luxury. 

And  as  I  came  out  of  the  final  portal  I  happened  to 
meet  a  student  actually  carrying  his  own  portmanteau — 
and  rather  tugging  at  it.  I  regretted  this  chance.  The 
spectacle  clashed,  and  ought  to  have  been  contrary  to 
etiquette.  That  student  should  in  propriety  have  been 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

followed  by  a  Nigerian,  Liberian,  or  Senegambian,  carry 
ing  his  portmanteau. 

My  visits  to  other  universities  were  about  as  brief, 
stirring,  suggestive,  and  incomplete  as  those  to  Columbia 
and  Harvard.  I  repeat  that  I  never  actually  saw  the 
educational  machine  in  motion.  What  it  seemed  to  me 
that  I  saw  in  each  case  was  a  tremendous  mechanical 
apparatus  at  rest,  a  rich,  empty  frame,  an  organism  wait 
ing  for  the  word  that  would  break  its  trance.  The  fault 
was,  of  course,  wholly  mine.  I  find  upon  reflection  that 
the  universities  which  I  recall  with  the  most  sympathy 
are  those  in  which  I  had  the  largest  opportunity  of  listen 
ing  to  the  informal  talk  of  the  faculty  and  its  wife.  I 
heard  some  mighty  talking  upon  occasion — and  in  par 
ticular  I  sat  willing  at  the  feet  of  a  president  who  could 
mingle  limericks  and  other  drollery,  the  humanities, 
science,  modern  linguistics,  and  economics  in  a  manner 
which  must  surely  make  him  historic. 

a. 

Education,  like  most  things  except  high-class  cookery, 
must  be  judged  by  ultimate  results ;  and  though  it  may 
not  be  possible  to  pass  any  verdict  on  current  educa 
tional  methods  (especially  when  you  do  not  happen  to 
have  even  seen  them  in  action),  one  can  to  a  certain  ex 
tent  assess  the  values  of  past  education  by  reference 
to  the  demeanor  of  adults  who  have  been  through  it. 
One  of  the  chief  aims  of  education  should  be  to  stimu 
late  the  great  virtue  of  curiosity.  The  worst  detractors 
of  the  American  race — and  there  are  some  severe  ones 
in  New  York,  London,  and  Paris! — will  not  be  able  to 
deny  that  an  unusually  active  curiosity  is  a  marked 

1 60 


EDUCATION    AND    ART 

characteristic  of  the  race.  Only  they  twist  that  very 
characteristic  into  an  excuse  for  still  further  detraction. 
They  will,  for  example,  point  to  the  " hordes"  (a  word 
which  they  regard  as  indispensable  in  this  connection) 
of  American  tourists  who  insist  on  seeing  everything 
of  historic  or  artistic  interest  that  is  visible  in  Europe. 
The  plausible  argument  is  that  the  mass  of  such  tourists 
are  inferior  in  intellect  and  taste  to  the  general  level  of 
Europeans  who  display  curiosity  about  history  or  art. 
Which  is  probably  true.  But  it  ought  to  be  remembered 
by  us  Europeans  (and  in  sackcloth!)  that  the  mass  of 
us  with  money  to  spend  on  pleasure  are  utterly  indiffer 
ent  to  history  and  art.  The  European  dilettante  goes 
to  the  Uffizi  and  sees  a  shopkeeper  from  Milwaukee 
gazing  ignorantly  at  a  masterpiece,  and  says:  "How 
inferior  this  shopkeeper  from  Milwaukee  is  to  me !  The 
American  is  an  inartistic  race!"  But  what  about  the 
shopkeeper  from  Huddersfield  or  Amiens?  The  shop 
keeper  from  Huddersfield  or  Amiens  will  be  flirting  about 
on  some  entirely  banal  beach — Scarborough  or  Trou- 
ville — and  for  all  he  knows  or  cares  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
might  have  been  a  cabman;  and  yet  the  loveliest  things 
in  the  world  are,  relatively  speaking,  at  his  door !  When 
the  European  shopkeeper  gets  as  far  as  Lucerne  in  Au 
gust,  he  thinks  that  a  journey  of  twenty-four  hours  en 
titles  him  to  rank  a  little  lower  than  Columbus.  It  was 
an  enormous  feat  for  him  to  reach  Lucerne,  and  he  must 
have  credit  for  it,  though  his  interest  in  art  is  in  no  wise 
thereby  demonstrated.  One  has  to  admit  that  he  now 
goes  to  Lucerne  in  hordes.  Praise  be  to  him!  But  I 
imagine  that  the  American  horde  "hustling  for  culture" 
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YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

in  no  matter  what  historic  center  will  compare  pretty 
favorably  with  the  European  horde  in  such  spots  as 
Lucerne. 

All  general  curiosity  is,  to  my  mind,  righteousness, 
and  I  so  count  it  to  the  American.  Not  that  I  think 
that  American  curiosity  is  always  the  highest  form  of 
curiosity,  or  that  it  is  not  limited.  With  its  apparent 
omnivorousness  it  is  often  superficial  and  too  easily 
satisfied — particularly  by  mere  words.  Very  seldom 
is  it  profound.  It  is  apt  to  browse  agreeably  on  ex 
ternals.  The  American,  like  Anglo-Saxons  generally, 
rarely  shows  a  passionate  and  yet  honest  curiosity  about 
himself  or  his  country,  which  is  curiosity  at  its  finest. 
He  will  divide  things  into  pleasant  and  unpleasant,  and 
his  curiosity  is  trained  to  stop  at  the  frontier  of  the  lat 
ter — an  Anglo-Saxon  device  for  being  comfortable  in 
your  mind !  He  likes  to  know  what  others  think  of  him 
and  his  country,  but  he  is  not  very  keen  on  knowing 
what  he  really  thinks  on  these  subjects  himself.  The 
highest  form  of  curiosity  is  apt  to  be  painful  sometimes. 
(And  yet  who  that  has  practised  it  would  give  it  up?) 
It  also  demands  intellectual  honesty — a  quality  which 
has  been  denied  by  Heaven  to  all  Anglo-Saxon  races, 
but  which  nevertheless  a  proper  education  ought  in  the 
end  to  achieve.  Were  I  asked  whether  I  saw  in  America 
any  improvement  upon  Britain  in  the  supreme  matter 
of  intellectual  honesty,  I  should  reply,  No.  I  seemed 
to  see  in  America  precisely  the  same  tendency  as  in 
Britain  to  pretend,  for  the  sake  of  instant  comfort,  that 
things  are  not  what  they  are,  J;he  same  timid  but  deter 
mined  dislike  of  the  whole  truth,  the  same  capacity  to 


EDUCATION   AND    ART 

be  shocked  by  notorious  and  universal  phenomena,  the 
same  delusion  that  a  refusal  to  look  at  these  phenomena 
is  equivalent  to  the  destruction  of  these  phenomena, 
the  same  flaccid  sentimentality  which  vitiates  practi 
cally  all  Anglo-Saxon  art.  And  I  have  stood  in  the 
streets  of  New  York,  as  I  have  stood  in  the  streets  of 
London,  and  longed  with  an  intense  nostalgia  for  one 
hour  of  Paris,  where,  amid  a  deplorable  decadence,  in 
tellectual  honesty  is  widely  discoverable,  and  where 
absolutely  straight  'thinking  and  talking  is  not  mistaken 

for  cynicism. 

«  • 

Another  test  of  education  is  the  feeling  for  art,  and 
the  creation  of  an  environment  which  encourages  the 
increase  of  artistic  talent.  (And  be  it  noted  in  passing 
that  the  intellectually  honest  races,  the  Latin,  have 
been  the  most  artistic,  for  the  mere  reason  that  intel 
lectual  dishonesty  is  just  sentimentality,  and  senti 
mentality  is  the  destroying  poison  of  art.)  Now  the 
most  exacerbating  experience  that  fell  to  me  in  America 
— and  it  fell  more  than  once — was  to  hear  in  discreetly 
lighted  and  luxurious  drawing-rooms,  amid  various 
mural  proofs  of  trained  taste,  and  usually  from  the  lips 
of  an  elegantly  Europeanized  American  woman  with  a 
sad,  agreeable  smile:  "There  is  no  art  in  the  United 
States.  ...  I  feel  like  an  exile. "  A  number  of  these 
exiles,  each  believing  himself  or  herself  to  be  a  solitary 
lamp  in  the  awful  darkness,  are  dotted  up  and  down  the 
great  cities,  and  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  they  bitterly 
despise  one  another.  In  so  doing  they  are  not  very 
wrong.  For,  in  the  first  place,  these  people,  like  nearly 

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YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

all  dilettanti  of  art,  are  extremely  unreliable  judges  of 
racial  characteristics.  Their  mentality  is  allied  to  that 
of  the  praisers  of  time  past,  who,  having  read  Tom  Jones 
and  Clarissa,  are  incapable  of  comprehending  that  the 
immense  majority  of  novels  produced  in  the  eighteenth 
century  were  nevertheless  terrible  rubbish.  They  go 
to  a  foreign  land,  deliberately  confine  their  attention  to 
the  artistic  manifestations  of  that  country,  and  then 
exclaim  in  ecstasy:  "What  an  artistic  country  this  is! 
How  different  from  my  own !"  To  the  same  class  belong 
certain  artistic  visitors  to  the  United  States  who,  having 
in  their  own  country  deliberately  cut  themselves  off 
from  intercourse  with  ordinary  inartistic  persons,  visit 
America,  and,  meeting  there  the  average  man  and 
woman  in  bulk,  frown  superiorly  and  exclaim:  "This 
Philistine  race  thinks  of  nothing  but  dollars!"  They 
cannot  see  the  yet  quite  evident  truth  that  the  rank  and 
file  of  every  land  is  about  equally  inartistic.  Modern 
Italy  may  in  the  mass  be  more  lyrical  than  America, 
but  in  either  architecture  or  painting  Italy  is  simply 
not  to  be  named  with  America. 

Further,  and  in  the  second  place,  these  people  never 
did  and  never  will  look  in  the  right  quarters  for  vital 
art.  A  really  original  artist  struggling  under  their  very 
noses  has  small  chance  of  being  recognized  by  them, 
the  reason  being  that  they  are  imitative,  with  no  real 
opinion  of  their  own.  They  associate  art  with  Floren 
tine  frames,  matinee  hats,  distant  museums,  and  clever 
talk  full  of  allusions  to  the  dead.  It  would  not  occur 
to  them  to  search  for  American  art  in  the  architecture 
of  railway  stations  and  the  draftsmanship  and  sketch- 

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MITCHELL   TOWER   AND   HUTCHINSON   COMMONS — UNIVERSITY    OF 
CHICAGO 


EDUCATION   AND   ART 

writing  of  newspapers  and  magazines,  because  theyhave 
not  the  wit  to  learn  that  genuine  art  flourishes  best  in 
the  atmosphere  of  genuine  popular  demand. 

Even  so,  with  all  their  blindness,  it  is  unnatural  that 
they  should  not  see  and  take  pride  in  the  spectacular 
historical  facts  which  prove  their  country  to  be  less 
negligible  in  art  than  they  would  assert.  I  do  not  mean 
the  existence  in  America  of  huge  and  glorious  collections 
of  European  masters.  I  have  visited  some  of  these  col 
lections,  and  have  taken  keen  pleasure  therein.  But 
I  perceive  in  them  no  national  significance — no  more 
national  significance  than  I  perceive  in  the  endowment 
of  splendid  orchestras  to  play  foreign  music  under  for 
eign  conductors,  or  in  the  fashionable  crowding  of  clas 
sical  concerts.  Indeed,  it  was  a  somewhat  melancholy 
experience  to  spend  hours  in  a  private  palace  crammed 
with  artistic  loveliness  that  was  apparently  beloved  and 
understood,  and  to  hear  not  one  single  word  disclosing 
the  slightest  interest  in  modern  American  art.  No,  as 
a  working  artist  myself,  I  was  more  impressed  and  re 
assured  by  such  a  sight  as  the  Innes  room  at  the  colossal 
Art  Institute  of  Chicago  than  by  all  the  collections  of 
old  masters  in  America,  though  I  do  not  regard  Innes 
as  a  very  distinguished  artist.  The  aforesaid  dilettanti 
would  naturally  condescend  to  the  Innes  room  at 
Chicago's  institute,  as  to  the  long-sustained,  difficult 
effort  which  is  being  made  by  a  school  of  Chicago  sculp 
tors  for  the  monumental  ornamentation  of  Chicago. 
But  the  dilettanti  have  accomplished  a  wonderful  feat 
of  unnaturalness  in  forgetting  that  their  poor,  inartis 
tic  Philistine  country  did  provide,  inter  alia,  the  great 

165 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

writer  who  has  influenced  French  imaginative  writers 
more  deeply  than  any  other  foreign  writer  since  Byron 
— Edgar  Allan  Poe;  did  produce  one  of  the  world's 
supreme  poets — Whitman;  did  produce  the  greatest 
pure  humorist  of  modern  times ;  did  produce  the  miracu 
lous  Henry  James ;  did  produce  Stanford  White  and  the 
incomparable  McKim;  and  did  produce  the  only  two 
Anglo-Saxon  personalities  who  in  graphic  art  have  been 
able  to  impose  themselves  on  modern  Europe — Whistler 

and  John  Sargent. 

• 

— ^- 

In  the  matter  of  graphic  art,  I  have  known  so  many 
American  painters  in  Paris  that  I  was  particularly  anx 
ious  to  see  what  American  painting  was  like  at  home. 
My  first  adventures  were  not  satisfactory.  I  trudged 
through  enormous  exhibitions,  and  they  filled  me  with 
just  the  same  feeling  of  desolation  and  misery  that  I 
experienced  at  the  Royal  Academy,  London,  or  the 
Societe  des  Artistes  Frangais,  Paris.  In  miles  of  slip 
pery  exercise  I  saw  almost  nothing  that  could  interest 
an  intelligent  amateur  who  had  passed  a  notable  portion 
of  his  life  in  studios.  The  first  modern  American  paint 
ing  that  arrested  me  was  one  by  Grover,  of  Chicago.  I 
remember  it  with  gratitude.  Often,  especially  in  New 
York,  I  was  called  upon  by  stay-at-home  dilettanti  to 
admire  the  work  of  some  shy  favorite,  and  with  the  best 
will  in  the  world  I  could  not,  on  account  of  his  too  ob 
vious  sentimentality.  In  Boston  I  was  authoritatively 
informed  that  the  finest  painting  in  the  whole  world 
was  at  that  moment  being  done  by  a  group  of  Boston 
artists  in  Boston.  But  as  I  had  no  opportunity  to  see 

166 


EDUCATION   AND    ART 

their  work,  I  cannot  offer  an  opinion  on  the  proud  claim. 
My  gloom  was  becoming  permanent,  when  one  wet  day 
I  invaded,  not  easily,  the  Macdowell  Club,  and,  while 
listening  to  a  chorus  rehearsal  of  Liszt's  ''St.  Elizabeth" 
made  the  acquaintance  of  really  interesting  pictures  by 
artists  such  as  Irving  R.  Wiles,  Jonas  Lie,  Henri,  Mrs. 
Johansen,  and  Brimley,  of  whom  previously  I  had 
known  nothing.  From  that  moment  I  progressed.  I 
met  the  work  of  James  Preston,  and  of  other  men  who 
can  truly  paint. 

All  these,  however,  with  all  their  piquant  merits, 
were  Parisianized.  They  could  have  put  up  a  good  show 
in  Paris  and  emerged  from  French  criticism  with  dig 
nity.  Whereas  there  is  one  American  painter  who  has 
achieved  a  reputation  on  the  tongues  of  men  in  Europe 
without  (it  is  said)  having  been  influenced  by  Europe, 
or  even  having  exhibited  there.  I  mean  Winslow 
Homer.  I  had  often  heard  of  Winslow  Homer  from 
connoisseurs  who  had  earned  my  respect,  and  assuredly 
one  of  my  reasons  for  coming  to  America  was  to  see 
Winslow  Homer's  pictures.  My  first  introduction  to 
his  oil-paintings  was  a  shock.  I  did  not  like  them,  and 
I  kept  on  not  liking  them.  I  found  them  theatrical  and 
violent  in  conception,  rather  conventional  in  design,  and 
repellent  in  color.  I  thought  the  painter's  attitude  tow 
ard  sea  and  rock  and  sky  decidedly  sentimental  beneath 
its  wilful  harshness.  And  I  should  have  left  America 
with  broken  hopes  of  Winslow  Homer  if  an  enthusiast 
for  State-patronized  art  had  not  insisted  on  taking  me 
to  the  State  Museum  at  Indianapolis.  In  this  agreeable 
and  interesting  museum  there  happened  to  be  a  tempo- 
id; 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

rary  loan  exhibit  of  water-colors  by  Winslow  Homer.  \ 
Which  water-colors  were  clearly  the  productions  of  a 
master.  They  forced  me  to  reconsider  my  views  of 
Homer's  work  in  general.  They  were  beautiful;  they 
thrilled;  they  were  genuine  American;  there  is  nothing 
else  like  them.  I  shall  never  forget  the  pleasure  I  felt 
in  unexpectedly  encountering  these  summary  and  highly 
distinguished  sketches  in  the  quietude  of  Indianapolis. 
I  would  have  liked  to  collect  a  trainful  of  New  York, 
Chicago,  and  Boston  dilettanti,  and  lead  them  by  the 
ears  to  the  unpretentious  museum  at  Indianapolis,  and 
force  them  to  regard  fixedly  these  striking  creations. 
Not  that  I  should  expect  appreciation  from  them! 
(Indianapolis,  I  discovered,  was  able  to  keep  perfectly 
calm  in  front  of  the  Winslow  Homer  water-colors.) 
But  their  observations  would  have  been  diverting. 


VIII 
CITIZENS 


VIII 

CITIZENS 

NOTHING  in  New  York  fascinated  me  as  much  as 
the  indications  of  the  vast  and  multitudinous 
straitened  middle-class  life  that  is  lived  there ;  the  aver 
age,  respectable,  difficult,  struggling  existence.  I  would 
always  regard  this  medium  plane  of  the  social  organism 
with  more  interest  than  the  upper  and  lower  planes. 
And  in  New  York  the  enormity  of  it  becomes  spectacu 
lar.  As  I  passed  in  Elevated  trains  across  the  end  of 
street  after  street,  and  street  after  street,  and  saw  so 
many  of  them  just  alike,  and  saw  so  many  similar  faces 
mysteriously  peering  in  the  same  posture  between  the 
same  curtains  through  the  same  windows  of  the  same 
great  houses;  and  saw  canaries  in  cages,  and  enfeebled 
plants  in  pots,  and  bows  of  ribbon,  and  glints  of  picture- 
frames  ;  and  saw  crowd  after  dense  crowd  fighting  down 
on  the  cobbled  roads  for  the  fearful  privilege  of  entering 
a  surface-car — I  had,  or  seemed  to  have,  a  composite 
vision  of  the  general  life  of  the  city. 

And  what  sharpened  and  stimulated  the  vision  more 
than  anything  else  was  the  innumerable  flashing  glimpses 
of  immense  torn  clouds  of  clean  linen,  or  linen  almost 
clean,  fluttering  and  shaking  in  withdrawn  courtyards 
between  rows  and  rows  of  humanized  windows.  This 
domestic  detail,  repugnant  possibly  to  some,  was  par- 

171 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

ticularly  impressive  to  me;  it  was  the  visible  index  of 
what  life  really  is  on  a  costly  rock  ruled  in  all  material 
essentials  by  trusts,  corporations,  and  the  grand  prin 
ciple  of  tipping. 

I  would  have  liked  to  live  this  life,  for  a  space,  in 
any  one  of  half  a  million  restricted  flats,  with  not  quite 
enough  space,  not  quite  enough  air,  not  quite  enough 
dollars,  and  a  vast  deal  too  much  continual  strain 
on  the  nerves.  I  would  have  liked  to  come  to  close 
quarters  with  it,  and  yet  its  subtle  and  sinister  toxin 
incurably  into  my  system.  Could  I  have  done  so, 
could  I  have  participated  in  the  least  of  the  uncountable 
daily  dramas  of  which  the  externals  are  exposed  to  the 
gaze  of  any  starer  in  an  Elevated.  I  should  have  known 
what  New  York  truly  meant  to  New-Yorkers,  and  what 
was  the  real  immediate  effect  of  average  education  re 
acting  on  average  character  in  average  circumstances; 
and  the  knowledge  would  have  been  precious  and  ex 
citing  beyond  all  knowledge  of  the  staggering  "won 
ders"  of  the  capital.  But,  of  course,  I  could  not  ap 
proach  so  close  to  reality;  the  visiting  stranger  seldom 
can;  he  must  be  content  with  his  imaginative  visions. 

Now  and  then  I  had  the  good-fortune  to  come  across 
illuminating  stories  of  New  York  dailiness,  tales  of  no 
important  event,  but  which  lit  up  for  me  the  whole 
expanse  of  existence  in  the  hinterlands  of  the  Elevated. 
As,  for  instance,  the  following.  The  tiny  young  wife 
of  the  ambitious  and  feverish  young  man  is  coming 
home  in  the  winter  afternoon.  She  is  forced  to  take 
the  street-car,  and  in  order  to  take  it  she  is  forced  to 
fight.  To  fight,  physically,  is  part  of  the  daily  round 

172 


PART    OF    THE    DAILY    ROUND    OF    THE    INDOMITABLE    NEW    YORK 
WOMAN 


CITIZENS 

of  the  average  fragile,  pale,  indomitable  New  York 
woman.  In  the  swaying  crowd  she  turns  her  head  sev 
eral  times,  and  in  tones  of  ever-increasing  politeness  re 
quests  a  huge  male  animal  behind  her  to  refrain  from 
pushing.  He  does  not  refrain.  Being  skilled,  as  a 
mariner  is  skilled  in  beaching  himself  and  a  boat  on  a 
surfy  shore,  she  does  ultimately  achieve  the  inside  of 
the  car,  and  she  sinks  down  therein  apparently  exhausted. 
The  huge  male  animal  follows,  and  as  he  passes  her,  in 
furiated  by  her  indestructible  politeness,  he  sticks  his 
head  against  her  little  one  and  says,  threateningly, 
"What's  the  matter  with  you,  anyway?"  He  could 
crush  her  like  a  butterfly,  and,  moreover,  she  is  about 
ready  to  faint.  But  suddenly,  in  uncontrollable  anger, 
she  lifts  that  tiny  gloved  hand  and  catches  the  huge 
male  animal  a  smart  smack  in  the  face.  "Can't  you 
be  polite?"  she  hisses.  Then  she  drops  back,  blushing, 
horrified  by  what  she  has  done.  She  sees  another  man 
throw  the  aghast  male  animal  violently  out  of  the  car, 
and  then  salute  her  with:  "Madam,  I  take  off  my  hat 
to  you."  And  the  tired  car  settles  down  to  apathy,  for, 
after  all,  the  incident  is  in  its  essence  part  of  the  dailiness 
of  New  York. 

The  young  wife  gets  home,  obsessed  by  the  fact  that 
she  has  struck  a  man  in  the  face  in  a  public  vehicle. 
She  is  still  blushing  when  she  relates  the  affair  in  a  rush 
of  talk  to  another  young  wife  in  the  flat  next  to  hers. 
"For  Heaven's  sake  don't  tell  my  husband,"  she  im 
plores.  "If  he  knew  he'd  leave  me  forever!"  And  the 
young  husband  comes  home,  after  his  own  personal  dose 
of  street-car,  preoccupied,  fatigued,  nervous,  hungry, 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

demanding  to  be  loved.  And  the  young  wife  has  to  be 
have  as  though  she  had  been  lounging  all  the  afternoon 
in  a  tea-gown  on  a  soft  sofa.  Curious  that,  although 
she  is  afraid  of  her  husband's  wrath,  the  temptation  to 
tell  him  grows  stronger!  Indeed,  is  it  not  a  rather  fine 
thing  that  she  has  done,  and  was  not  the  salute  of  the 
admiring  male  flattering  and  sweet?  Not  many  tiny 
wives  would  have  had  the  pluck  to  slap  a  brute's  face. 
She  tells  the  young  husband.  It  is  an  error  of  tact  on 
her  part.  For  he,  secretly  exacerbated,  was  waiting  for 
just  such  an  excuse  to  let  himself  go.  He  is  angry,  he 
is  outraged — as  she  had  said  he  would  be.  What — his 
wife,  his — etc.,  etc.! 

A  night  full  of  everything  except  sleep;  full  of  Ele 
vated  and  rumbling  cars,  and  trumps  of  autos,  and  the 
eternal  liveliness  of  the  cobbled  street,  and  all  incom 
prehensible  noises,  and  stuffiness,  and  the  sense  of  other 
human  beings  too  close  above,  too  close  below,  and  to 
the  left  and  to  the  right,  and  before  and  behind,  the 
sense  that  there  are  too  many  people  on  earth!  What 
New-Yorker  does  not  know  the  wakings  after  the  febrile 
doze  that  ends  such  a  night?  The  nerves  like  taut 
strings;  love  turned  into  homicidal  hatred;  and  the 
radiator  damnably  tapping,  tapping!  .  .  .  The  young 
husband  afoot  and  shaved  and  inexpensively  elegant, 
and  he  is  demanding  his  fried  eggs.  The  young  wife  is 
afoot,  too,  manceuvering  against  the  conspiracies  of  the 
janitor,  who  lives  far  below  out  of  sight,  but  who  per 
meates  her  small  flat  like  a  malignant  influence.  .  .  .  Hear 
the  whistling  of  the  dumb-waiter ! .  . .  Eggs  are  demanded, 
authoritatively,  bitterly.  If  glances  could  kill,  not  only 


CITIZENS 

that  flat  but  the  whole  house  would  be  strewn  with 
corpses.  .  .  .  Eggs!  .... 

Something  happens,  something  arrives,  something 
snaps;  a  spell  is  broken  and  horror  is  let  loose.  "Take 
your  eggs!"  cries  the  tiny  wife,  in  a  passion.  The  eggs 
fly  across  the  table,  and  the  front  of  a  man's  suit  is 
ruined.  She  sits  down  and  fairly  weeps,  appalled  at 
herself.  Last  evening  she  was  punishing  males;  this 
morning  she  turns  eggs  into  missiles,  she  a  loving,  an 
ambitious,  an  intensely  respectable  young  wife!  As  for 
him,  he  sits  motionless,  silent,  decorated  with  the  colors 
of  eggs,  a  graduate  of  a  famous  university.  Calamity 
has  brought  him  also  to  his  senses.  Still  weeping,  she 
puts  on  her  hat  and  jacket.  "Where  are  you  going?" 
he  asks,  solemnly,  no  longer  homicidal,  no  longer  hungry. 
"I  must  hurry  to  the  cleaners  for  your  other  suit!"  says 
she,  tragic.  And  she  hurries.  .  .  . 

A  shocking  story,  a  sordid  story,  you  say.  Not  a 
bit!  They  are  young;  they  have  the  incomparable 
virtue  of  youthfulness.  It  is  naught,  all  that!  The 
point  of  the  story  is  that  it  illustrates  New  York — a 
New  York  more  authentic  than  the  spaciousness  of 
upper  Fifth  Avenue  or  the  unnatural  dailiness  of  grand 
hotels.  I  like  it. 


You  may  see  that  couple  later  in  a  suburban  house — 
a  real  home  for  the  time  being,  with  a  colorable  imita 
tion  of  a  garden  all  about  it,  and  the  "finest  suburban 
railway  service  in  the  world":  the  whole  being  a 
frame  and  environment  for  the  rearing  of  children.  I 

i75 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

have  sat  at  dinner  in  such  houses,  and  the  talk  was  of 
nothing  but  children;  and  anybody  who  possessed  any 
children,  or  any  reliable  knowledge  of  the  ways  of  chil 
dren,  was  sure  of  a  respectable  hearing  and  warm  in 
terest.  If  one  said,  "By  the  way,  I  think  I  may  have 
a  photograph  of  the  kid  in  my  pocket,"  every  eye  would 
reply  immediately:  "Out  with  it,  man — or  woman! — 
and  don't  pretend  you  don't  always  carry  the  photo 
graph  with  you  on  purpose  to  show  it  off!"  In  such  a 
house  it  is  proved  that  children  are  unmatched  as  an 
exhaustless  subject  of  conversation.  And  the  conversa 
tion  is  rendered  more  thrilling  by  the  sense  of  partially 
tamed  children — children  fully  aware  of  their  supremacy 
— prowling  to  and  fro  unseen  in  muddy  boots  and  torn 
pinafores,  and  speculating  in  their  realistic  way  upon 
the  mysteriousness  of  adults. 

"We  are  keen  on  children  here,"  says  the  youngish 
father,  frankly.  He  is  altered  now  from  the  man  he 
was  when  he  inhabited  a  diminutive  flat  in  the  full  swirl 
of  New  York.  His  face  is  calmer,  milder,  more  benevo 
lent,  and  more  resignedly  worried.  And  assuredly  no 
one  would  recognize  in  him  the  youth  who  howled  mur 
derously  at  university  football  matches  and  cried  with 
monstrous  ferocity  at  sight  of  danger  from  the  opposing 
colors:  "Kill  him!  Kill  him  for  me!  I  can't  stand  his 
red  stockings  coming  up  the  field!"  Yet  it  is  the  same 
man.  And  this  father,  too,  is  the  fruit  of  university 
education;  and  further,  one  feels  that  his  passion  for 
his  progeny  is  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  American  in 
terest  in  education.  He  and  his  like  are  at  the  root  of 
the  modern  university — not  the  millionaires.  In  Chicago 

176 


CITIZENS 

I  was  charmed  to  hear  it  stoutly  and  even  challengingly 
maintained  that  the  root  of  Chicago  University  was  not 
Mr.  Rockefeller,  but  the  parents  of  Chicago. 

Assuming  that  the  couple  have  no  children,  there  is  a 
good  chance  of  catching  them  later,  splendidly  miser 
able,  in  a  high-class  apartment-house,  where  the  entire 
daily  adventure  of  living  is  taken  out  of  your  hands  and 
done  for  you,  and  you  pay  a  heavy  price  in  order  to  be 
deprived  of  one  of  the  main  interests  of  existence.  The 
apartment-house  ranks  in  my  opinion  among  the  more 
pernicious  influences  in  American  life.  As  an  institution 
it  is  unhappily  establishing  itself  in  England,  and  in 
England  it  is  terrible.  I  doubt  if  it  is  less  terrible  in 
its  native  land.  It  is  anti-social  because  it  works  always  7 

against  the  preservation  of  the  family  unit,  and  because 
it  is  unfair  to  children,  and  because  it  prevents  the  full 
flowering  of  an  individuality.  (Nobody  can  be  himself 
in  an  apartment-house;  if  he  tried  that  game  he  would 
instantly  be  thrown  out.)  It  is  immoral  because  it 
fosters  bribery  and  because  it  is  pretentious  itself  and 
encourages  pretense  in  its  victims.  It  is  unfavorable 
to  the  growth  of  taste  because  its  decorations  and  furni 
ture  are  and  must  be  ugly;  they  descend  to  the  artistic 
standard  of  the  vulgarest  people  in  it,  and  have  not 
even  the  merit  of  being  the  expression  of  any  individual 
ity  at  all.  It  is  enervating  because  it  favors  the  creation 
of  a  race  that  can  do  absolutely  nothing  for  itself.  It 
is  unhealthy  because  it  is  sometimes  less  clean  than  it 
seems,  and  because  often  it  forces  its  victims  to  eat  in 
a  dining-room  whose  walls  are  a  distressing  panorama 
of  Swiss  scenery,  and  because  its  cuisine  is  and  must  be 

12  177 


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at  best  mediocre,  since  meals  at  once  sound  and  showy 
cannot  be  prepared  wholesale. 

Some  apartment -houses  are  better  than  others;  many 
are  possibly  marvels  of  organization  and  value  for  money. 
But  none  can  wholly  escape  the  indictment.  The  in 
stitution  itself,  though  it  may  well  be  a  natural  and  in 
evitable  by-product  of  racial  evolution,  is  bad.  An 
experienced  dweller  in  apartment-houses  said  to  me,  of 
a  seeming-magnificent  house  which  I  had  visited  and 
sampled:  "We  pay  six  hundred  dollars  for  two  poor 
little  rooms  and  a  bath-room,  and  twenty-five  dollars 
a  week  for  board,  whether  we  eat  or  not.  The  food  is 
very  bad.  It  is  all  kept  hot  for  about  an  hour,  on  steam, 
so  that  every  dish  tastes  of  laundry.  Everything  is  an 
extra.  Telephone — lights — tips — especially  tips.  I  tip 
everybody.  I  even  tip  the  chef.  I  tip  the  chef  so  that, 
when  I  am  utterly  sick  of  his  fanciness  and  prefer  a  mere 
chop  or  a  steak,  he  will  choose  me  an  eatable  chop  or 
steak.  And  that's  how  things  go  on!" 

My  true  and  candid  friend,  the  experienced  dweller 
in  apartment-houses,  was,  I  have  good  reason  to  believe, 
an  honorable  man.  And  it  is  therefore  a  considerable 
tribute  to  the  malefic  influence  of  apartment-house  life 
that  he  had  no  suspicion  of  the  gross  anti-social  im 
morality  of  his  act  in  tipping  the  chef.  Clearly  it  was  an 
act  calculated  to  undermine  the  chefs  virtue.  If  all  the 
other  experienced  dwellers  did  the  same,  it  was  also 
a  silly  act,  producing  no  good  effect  at  all.  But  if  only 
a  few  of  them  did  it,  then  it  was  an  act  which  resulted 
in  the  remainder  of  the  victims  being  deprived  of  their 
full,  fair  chance  of  getting  eatable  chops  or  steaks.  My 

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friend's  proper  course  was  obviously  to  have  kicked  up 
a  row,  and  to  have  kicked  up  a  row  in  a  fashion  so  clever 
that  the  management  would  not  put  him  into  the  street. 
He  ought  to  have  organized  a  committee  of  protest,  he 
ought  to  have  convened  meetings  for  the  outlet  of  public 
opinion,  he  ought  to  have  persevered  day  after  day  and 
evening  after  evening,  until  the  management  had  been 
forced  to  exclude  uneatable  chops  and  steaks  utterly 
from  their  palatial  premises  and  to  exact  the  honest 
performance  of  duty  from  each  and  all  of  the  staff.  In 
the  end  it  would  have  dawned  upon  the  management 
that  inedible  food  was  just  as  much  out  of  place  in  the 
restaurant  as  counterfeit  bills  and  coins  at  the  cash- 
desk.  The  proper  course  would  have  been  difficult  and 
tiresome.  The  proper  course  often  is.  My  friend  took 
the  easy,  wicked  course.  That  is  to  say,  he  exhibited 
a  complete  lack  of  public  spirit. 

« 

An  apartment-house  is  only  an  apartment-house; 
whereas  the  republic  is  the  republic.  And  yet  I  permit 
myself  to  think  that  the  one  may  conceivably  be  the 
mirror  of  the  other.  And  I  do  positively  think  that 
American  education  does  not  altogether  succeed  in  the 
very  important  business  of  inculcating  public  spirit  ^ 
into  young  citizens.  I  judge  merely  by  results.  Most  \ 
peoples  fail  in  the  high  quality  of  public  spirit ;  and  thd 
American  perhaps  not  more  so  than  the  rest.  Perhaps 
all  I  ought  to  say  is  that  according  to  my  own  limited 
observation  public  spirit  is  not  among  the  shining  attri 
butes  of  the  United  States  citizen.  And  even  to  that 
statement  there  will  be  animated  demur,  For  have  not 

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the  citizens  of  the  United  States  been  conspicuous  for 
their  public  spirit  ?  .  .  . 

It  depends  on  what  is  meant  by  public  spirit — that 
is,  public  spirit  in  its  finer  forms.  I  know  what  I  do  not 
mean  by  public  spirit.  I  was  talking  once  to  a  member 
of  an  important  and  highly  cultivated  social  community, 
and  he  startled  me  by  remarking : 

"The  major  vices  do  not  exist  in  this  community  at 
all." 

I  was  prepared  to  credit  that  such  Commandments 
as  the  Second  and  Sixth  were  not  broken  in  that  com 
munity.  But  I  really  had  doubts  about  some  others, 
such  as  the  Seventh  and  Tenth.  However,  he  assured 
me  that  such  transgressions  were  unknown. 

"What  do  you  do  here?"  I  asked. 

He  replied :  *  *  We  live  for  social  service — f or  each  other. ' ' 

T^jjfpirit  characterizing  that  community  would  never 
be  described  by  me  as  public  spirit.  I  should  fit  it  with 
a  word  which  will  occur  at  once  to  every  reader. 

On  the  other  hand,  I  cannot  admit  as  proof  of  public 
spirit  the  prevalent  American  habit  of  giving  to  the 
public  that  which  is  useless  to  oneself — no  matter  how 
immense  the  quantity  given,  and  no  matter  how  ad 
mirable  the  end  in  view.  When  you  have  got  the  money 
it  is  rather  easy  to  sit  down  and  write  a  check  for  five 
million  dollars,  and  so  bring  a  vast  public  institution 
into  being.  It  is  still  easier  to  leave  the  same  sum  by 
testament.  These  feats  are  an  afTair  of  five  minutes 
or  so;  they  cost  simply  nothing  in  time  or  comfort  or 
peace  of  mind.  If  they  are  illustrations  of  public  spirit, 
it  is  a  low  and  facile  form  of  public  spirit. 

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True  public  spirit  is  equally  difficult  for  the  millionaire 
and  for  the  clerk.  It  is,  in  fact,  very  tedious  work.  It 
implies  the  quiet  daily  determination  to  get  eatable 
chops  and  steaks  by  honest  means,  chiefly  for  oneself, 
but  incidentally  for  everybody  else.  It  necessitates 
trouble  and  inconvenience.  I  was  in  a  suburban  house 
one  night,  and  it  was  the  last  night  for  registering  names 
on  an  official  list  of  voters  before  an  election ;  it  was  also 
a  rainy  night.  The  master  of  the  house  awaited  a  car 
riage,  which  was  to  be  sent  up  by  a  candidate,  at  the 
candidate's  expense,  to  take  him  to  the  place  of  regis 
tration.  Time  grew  short. 

"Shall  you  walk  there  if  the  carriage  doesn't  come?" 
I  asked,  and  gazed  firmly  at  the  prospective  voter. 

At  that  moment  the  carriage  came.  We  drove  forth 
together,  and  in  a  cabin  warmed  by  a  stove  and  full  of 
the  steam  of  mackintoshes  I  saw  an  interesting  part  of 
the  American  Constitution  at  work — four  hatted  gentle 
men  writing  simultaneously  the  same  particulars  in 
four  similar  ledgers,  while  exhorting  a  fifth  to  keep  the 
stove  alight.  An  acquaintance  came  in  who  had  trudged 
one  mile  through  the  rain.  That  acquaintance  showed 
public  spirit.  In  the  ideal  community  a  candidate  for 
election  will  not  send  round  carriages  in  order,  at  the 
last  moment,  to  induce  citizens  to  register;  in  the  ideal 
community  citizens  will  regard  such  an  attention  as  in 
the  nature  of  an  insult. 

I  was  told  that  millionaires  and  presidents  of  trusts 
were  chiefly  responsible  for  any  backwardness  of  public 
spirit  in  the  United  States.  I  had  heard  and  read  the 
same  thing  about  the  United  States  in  England.  I  was 

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YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

therefore  curious  to  meet  these  alleged  sinister  creatures. 
And  once,  at  a  repast,  I  encountered  quite  a  bunch  of 
millionaire-presidents.  I  had  them  on  my  right  hand 
and  on  my  left.  No  two  were  in  the  least  alike.  In 
my  simplicity  I  had  expected  a  type — formidable,  in 
timidating.  One  bubbled  with  jollity;  obviously  he 
"had  not  a  care  in  the  world."  Another  was  grave.  I 
talked  with  the  latter,  but  not  easily.  He  was  taciturn. 
Or  he  may  have  been  feeling  his  way.  Or  he  may  have 
been  not  quite  himself.  Even  millionaire-presidents 
must  be  self-conscious.  Just  as  a  notorious  author  is 
too  often  rendered  uneasy  by  the  consciousness  of  his 
notoriety,  so  even  a  millionaire-president  may  some 
times  have  a  difficulty  in  being  quite  natural.  How 
ever,  he  did  ultimately  talk.  It  became  clear  to  me  that 
he  was  an  extremely  wise  and  sagacious  man.  The  lines 
of  his  mouth  were  ruthlessly  firm,  yet  he  showed  a  gen 
eral  sympathy  with  all  classes  of  society,  and  he  met  my 
radicalism  quite  half-way.  On  woman's  suffrage  he  was 
very  fair-minded.  As  to  his  own  work,  he  said  to  me 
that  when  a  New  York  paper  asked  him  to  go  and  be 
cross-examined  by  its  editorial  board  he  willingly  went, 
because  he  had  nothing  to  conceal.  He  convinced  me 
of  his  uprightness  and  of  his  benevolence.  He  showed 
a  nice  regard  for  the  claims  of  the  Republic,  and  a  proper 
appreciation  of  what  true  public  spirit  is. 

Some  time  afterward  I  was  talking  to  a  very  promi 
nent  New  York  editor,  and  the  conversation  turned  to 
millionaires,  whereupon  for  about  half  an  hour  the  edi 
tor  agreeably  recounted  circumstantial  stories  of  the 
turpitude  of  celebrated  millionaires — stories  which  he 

182 


CITIZENS 

alleged  to  be  authentic  and  undeniable  in  every  detail. 
I  had  to  gasp.  "But  surely — "  I  exclaimed,  and  men 
tioned  the  man  who  had  so  favorably  impressed  me. 

"Well,"  said  the  editor,  reluctantly,  after  a  pause, 
"I  admit  he  has  the  new  sense  of  right  and  wrong  to  a 
greater  extent  than  any  of  his  rivals." 

I  italicize  the  heart  of  the  phrase,  because  it  is  itali 
cized  in  my  memory.  No  words  that  I  heard  in  the 
United  States  more  profoundly  struck  me.  Yet  the 
editor  had  used  them  quite  ingenuously,  unaware  that 
he  was  saying  anything  singular !  .  .  .  Since  when  is  the 
sense  of  right  and  wrong  "new"  in  America? 

Perhaps  all  that  the  editor  meant  was  that  public 
spirit  in  its  higher  forms  was  growing  in  the  United 
States,  and  beginning  to  show  itself  spectacularly  here 
and  there  in  the  immense  drama  of  commercial  and 
industrial  policies.  That  public  spirit  is  growing,  I 
believe.  It  chanced  that  I  found  the  basis  of  my  belief 
more  in  Chicago  than  anywhere  else. 

« 

I  have  hitherto  said  nothing  of  the  "folk" — the  great 
mass  of  the  nation,  who  t  live  chiefly  by  the  exercise,  in 
one  way  or  another,  of  muscular  power  or  adroitness, 
and  who,  if  they  possess  drawing-rooms,  do  not  sit  in 
them.  Like  most  writers,  when  I  have  used  such  phrases 
as  "the  American  people"  I  have  meant  that  small 
dominant  minority  which  has  the  same  social  code  as 
myself.  Goethe  asserted  that  the  folk  were  the  only 
real  people.  I  do  not  agree  with  him,  for  I  have  never 
found  one  city  more  real  than  another  city,  nor  one  class 
of  people  more  real  than  another  class.  Still,  he  was 

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YOUR    UNITED    STATES 

Goethe,  and  the  folk,  though  mysterious,  are  very  real; 
and,  since  they  constitute  perhaps  five-sixths  of  the 
nation,  it  would  be  singular  to  ignore  them.  I  had 
two  brief  glimpses  of  them,  and  the  almost  theatrical 
contrast  of  these  two  glimpses  may  throw  further  light 
upon  the  question  just  discussed. 

I  evaded  Niagara  and  the  Chicago  Stock-yards,  but 
I  did  not  evade  the  "East  Side"  of  New  York.  The 
East  Side  insisted  on  being  seen,  and  I  was  not  unwilling. 
In  charge  of  a  highly  erudite  newspaper  man,  and  of  an 
amiable  Jewish  detective,  who,  originally  discovered  by 
Colonel  Roosevelt,  had  come  out  first  among  eighteen 
hundred  competitors  in  a  physical  examination,  my  par 
ticular  friend  and  I  went  forth  one  intemperate  night 
to  "do"  the  East  Side  in  an  automobile.  We  saw  the 
garlanded  and  mirrored  core  of  "Sharkey's"  saloon,  of 
which  the  most  interesting  phenomenon  was  a  male 
pianist  who  would  play  the  piano  without  stopping  till 
2.30  A.M.  With  about  two  thousand  other  persons,  we 
had  the  privilege  of  shaking  hands  with  Sharkey.  We 
saw  another  saloon,  frequented  by  murderers  who  re 
sembled  shop  assistants.  We  saw  a  Hebraic  theater, 
whose  hospitable  proprietor  informed  us  how  he  had 
discovered  a  great  play-writing  genius,  and  how  on  the 
previous  Saturday  night  he  had  turned  away  seven 
thousand  patrons  for  lack  of  room!  Certainly  on  our 
night  the  house  was  crammed;  and  the  play  seemed  of 
realistic  quality,  and  the  actresses  effulgently  lovely. 
We  saw  a  Polack  dancing-hall,  where  the  cook-girls  were 
slatterns,  but  romantic  slatterns.  We  saw  Seward  Park, 
which  is  the  dormitory  of  the  East  Side  in  summer. 

184 


CITIZENS 

We  saw  a  van  clattering  off  with  prisoners  to  the  night 
court.  We  saw  illustrious  burglars,  "gunmen,"  and 
"dukes"  of  famous  streets — for  we  had  but  to  raise  a 
beckoning  finger,  and  they  approached  us,  grinning,  out 
of  gloomy  shadows.  (And  very  ordinary  they  seemed 
in  spite  of  slashed  faces!) 

We  even  saw  Chinatown,  and  the  wagonettes  of  tour 
ists  stationary  in  its  streets.  I  had  suspected  that 
Chinatown  was  largely  a  show  for  tourists.  When  I 
asked  how  it  existed,  I  was  told  that  the  two  thousand 
Chinese  of  Chinatown  lived  on  the  ten  thousand  Chinese 
who  came  into  it  from  all  quarters  on  Sundays,  and  I 
understood.  As  a  show  it  lacked  convincingness — ex 
cept  the  delicatessen-shop,  whose  sights  and  odors 
silenced  criticism.  It  had  the  further  disadvantage, 
by  reason  of  its  tawdry  appeals  of  color  and  light,  of 
making  one  feel  like  a  tourist.  Above  a  certain  level 
of  culture,  no  man  who  is  a  tourist  has  the  intellectual 
honesty  to  admit  to  himself  that  he  is  a  tourist.  Such 
honesty  is  found  only  on  the  lower  levels.  The  detective 
saved  our  pride  from  time  to  time  by  introducing  us  to 
sights  which  the  despicable  ordinary  tourists  cannot 
see.  It  was  a  proud  moment  for  us  when  we  assisted 
at  a  conspiratorial  interview  between  our  detective  and 
the  "captain  of  the  precincts."  And  it  was  a  proud  mo 
ment  when  in  an  inconceivable  retreat  we  were  per 
mitted  to  talk  with  an  aged  Chinese  actor  and  view  his 
collection  of  flowery  hats.  It  was  a  still  prouder  (and 
also  a  subtly  humiliating)  moment  when  we  were  led 
through  courtyards  and  beheld  in  their  cloistral  aloof 
ness  the  American  legitimate  wives  of  wealthy  China- 

185 


YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

men,  sitting  gorgeous,  with  the  quiescence  of  odalisques, 
in  gorgeous  uncurtained  interiors.  I  was  glad  when  one 
of  the  ladies  defied  the  detective  by  abruptly  swishing 
down  her  blind. 

But  these  affairs  did  not  deeply  stir  my  imagination. 
More  engaging  was  the  detective's  own  habit  of  stopping 
the  automobile  every  hundred  yards  or  so  in  order  to 
point  out  the  exact  spot  on  which  a  murder,  or  several 
murders,  had  been  committed.  Murder  was  his  chief 
interest.  I  noticed  the  same  trait  in  many  newspaper 
men,  who  would  sit  and  tell  excellent  murder  stories  by 
the  hour.  But  murder  was  so  common  on  the  East  Side 
that  it  became  for  me  curiously  puerile — a  sort  of 
naughtiness  whose  punishment,  to  be  effective,  ought  to 
wound,  rather  than  flatter,  the  vanity  of  the  child- 
minded  murderers.  More  engaging  still  was  the  ex 
traordinary  frequency  of  banks — some  with  opulent 
illuminated  signs — and  of  cinematograph  shows.  In 
the  East  End  of  London  or  of  Paris  banks  are  assured 
ly  not  a  feature  of  the  landscape — and  for  good  reason. 
The  cinematograph  is  possibly,  on  the  whole,  a  civilizing 
agent ;  it  might  easily  be  the  most  powerful  force  on  the 
East  Side.  I  met  the  gentleman  who  "controlled"  all 
the  cinematographs,  and  was  reputed  to  make  a  million 
dollars  a  year  net  therefrom.  He  did  not  appear  to  be 
a  bit  weighed  down,  either  by  the  hugeness  of  his  op 
portunity  or  by  the  awfulness  of  his  responsibility. 

The  supreme  sensation  of  the  East  Side  is  the  sensa 
tion  of  its  astounding  populousness.  The  most  populous 
street  in  the  world — Rivington  Street — is  a  sight  not 
to  be  forgotten.  Compared  to  this,  an  up-town  thor- 

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THE    ASTOUNDING    POPULOUSNESS    OF    THE    EAST    SIDE 


CITIZENS 

oughfare  of  crowded  middle-class  flats  io  the  open 
country — is  an  uninhabited  desert!  The  architecture 
seemed  to  sweat  humanity  at  every  window  and  door. 
The  roadways  were  often  impassable.  The  thought  of 
the  hidden  interiors  was  terrifying.  Indeed,  the  hidden 
interiors  would  not  bear  thinking  about.  The  fancy 
shunned  them — a  problem  not  to  be  settled  by  sudden 
municipal  edicts,  but  only  by  the  efflux  of  generations. 
Confronted  by  this  spectacle  of  sickly-faced  immortal 
creatures,  who  lie  closer  than  any  other  wild  animals 
would  lie;  who  live  picturesque, feverish,  and  appal 
ling  existences;  who  amuse  themselves,  who  enrich 
themselves,  who  very  often  lift  themselves  out  of  the 
swarming  warren  and  leave  it  forever,  but  whose  daily 
experience  in  the  warren  is  merely  and  simply  horrible 
—confronted  by  this  incomparable  and  overwhelming 
phantasmagoria  (for  such  it  seems),  one  is  foolishly  apt 
to  protest,  to  inveigh,  to  accuse.  The  answer  to  futile 
animadversions  was  in  my  particular  friend's  query: 
"Well,  what  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?" 

« 

My  second  glimpse  of  the  folk  was  at  quite  another 
end  of  the  city  of  New  York — namely,  the  Bronx.  I  was 
urgently  invited  to  go  and  see  how  the  folk  lived  in  the 
Bronx;  and,  feeling  convinced  that  a  place  with  a  name 
so  remarkable  must  itself  be  remarkable,  I  went.  The 
center  of  the  Bronx  is  a  racket  of  Elevated,  bordered  by 
banks,  theaters,  and  other  places  of  amusement.  As  a 
spectacle  it  is  decent,  inspiring  confidence  but  not  awe, 
and  being  rather  repellent  to  the  sense  of  beauty.  No 
body  could  call  it  impressive.  Yet  I  departed  from  the 

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YOUR   UNITED   STATES 

Bronx  ver  considerably  impressed.  It  is  the  interiors 
of  the  Bronx  homes  that  are  impressive.  I  was  led  to 
a  part  of  the  Bronx  where  five  years  previously  there 
had  been  six  families,  and  where  there  are  now  over 
two  thousand  families  This  was  newest  New  York. 

No  obstacle  impeded  my  invasion  of  the  domestic 
privacies  of  the  Bronx.  The  mistresses  of  flats  showed 
me  round  everything  with  politeness  and  with  obvious 
satisfaction.  A  stout  lady,  whose  husband  was  either 
an  artisan  or  a  clerk,  I  forget  which,  inducted  me  into 
a  flat  of  four  rooms,  of  which  the  rent  was  twenty-six 
dollars  a  month.  She  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  cen 
tral  heating,  gas,  and  electricity;  and  among  the  land 
lord's  fixtures  were  a  refrigerator,  a  kitchen  range,  a 
bookcase,  and  a  sideboard.  Such  amenities  for  the 
people — for  the  petits  gens — simply  do  not  exist  in 
Europe;  they  do  not  even  exist  for  the  wealthy  in 
Europe.  But  there  was  also  the  telephone,  the  house 
exchange  being  in  charge  of  the  janitor's  daughter — a 
pleasing  occupant  of  the  entrance-hall.  I  was  told  that 
the  telephone,  with  a  "nickel"  call,  increased  the  occu 
pancy  of  the  Bronx  flats  by  ten  per  cent. 

Thence  I  visited  the  flat  of  a  doctor — a  practitioner 
who  would  be  the  equivalent  of  a  "shilling"  doctor  in 
a  similar  quarter  of  London.  Here  were  seven  rooms, 
at  a  rent  of  forty-five  dollars  a  month,  and  no  end  of 
conveniences — certainly  many  more  than  in  any  flat 
that  I  had  ever  occupied  myself!  I  visited  another 
house  and  saw  similar  interiors.  And  now  I  began  to 
be  struck  by  the  splendor  and  the  cleanliness  of  the 
halls,  landings,  and  staircases:  marble  halls,  tesselated 

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CITIZENS 

landings,  and  stairs  out  of  Holland ;  the  whole  producing 
a  gorgeous  effect — to  match  the  glory  of  the  embroidered 
pillow-cases  in  the  bedrooms.  On  the  roofs  were  drying- 
grounds,  upon  which  each  tenant  had  her  rightful  "day," 
so  that  altercations  might  not  arise.  I  saw  an  empty 
flat.  The  professional  vermin  exterminator  had  just 
gone — for  the  landlord-company  took  no  chances  in 
this  detail  of  management. 

Then  I  was  lifted  a  little  higher  in  the  social-financial 
scale,  to  a  building  of  which  the  entrance-hall  reminded 
me  of  the  foyers  of  grand  hotels.  A  superb  negro  held 
dominion  therein,  but  not  over  the  telephone  girl,  who 
ran  the  exchange  ten  hours  a  day  for  twenty-five  dollars 
a  month,  which,  considering  that  the  janitor  received 
sixty-five  dollars  and  his  rooms,  seemed  to  me  to  be 
somewhat  insufficient.  In  this  house  the  corridors  were 
broader,  and  to  the  conveniences  was  added  a  mail- 
shoot,  a  device  which  is  still  regarded  in  Europe  as  the 
final  word  of  plutocratic  luxury  rampant.  The  rents 
ran  to  forty-eight  dollars  a  month  for  six  rooms.  In 
this  house  I  was  asked  by  hospitable  tenants  whether 
I  was  not  myself,  and,  when  I  had  admitted  that  I  was 
myself,  books  of  which  I  had  been  guilty  were  produced, 
and  I  was  called  upon  to  sign  them. 

The  fittings  and  decorations  of  all  these  flats  were  ar 
tistically  vulgar,  just  as  they  are  in  flats  costing  a  thou 
sand  dollars  a  month,  but  they  were  well  executed,  and 
resulted  in  a  general  harmonious  effect  of  innocent  pros 
perity.  The  people  whom  I  met  showed  no  trace  of 
the  influence  of  those  older  artistic  civilizations  whose 
charm  seems  subtly  to  pervade  the  internationalism 

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YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

of  the  East  Side.  In  certain  strata  and  streaks  of  so 
ciety  on  the  East  Side  things  artistic  and  intellectual 
are  comprehended  with  an  intensity  of  emotion  and 
understanding  impossible  to  Anglo-Saxons.  This  I 
know. 

The  Bronx  is  different.  The  Bronx  is  beginning  again, 
at  a  stage  earlier  than  art,  and  beginning  better.  It  is 
a  place  for  those  who  have  learnt  that  physical  righteous 
ness  has  got  to  be  the  basis  of  all  future  progress.  It  is 
a  place  to  which  the  fit  will  be  attracted,  and  where  the 
fit  will  survive.  It  has  rather  a  harsh  quality.  It  re 
minded  me  of  a  phrase  used  by  an  American  at  the  head 
of  an  enormous  business.  He  had  been  explaining  to 
me  how  he  tried  a  man  in  one  department,  and,  if  he  did 
not  shine  in  that,  then  in  another,  and  in  another,  and 
so  on.  "And  if  you  find  in  the  end  that  he's  honest  but 
not  efficient?"  I  asked.  "Then,"  was  the  answer,  "we 
think  he's  entitled  to  die,  and  we  fire  him." 

The  Bronx  presented  itself  to  me  as  a  place  where  the 
right  of  the  inefficient  to  expire  would  be  cheerfully  rec 
ognized.  The  district  that  I  inspected  was  certainly,  as 
I  say,  for  the  fit.  Efficiency  in  physical  essentials  was 
inculcated — and  practised — by  the  landlord-company, 
whose  constant  aim  seemed  to  be  to  screw  up  higher  and 
higher  the  self-respect  of  its  tenants.  That  the  landlord- 
company  was  not  a  band  of  philanthropists,  but  a  capi 
talistic  group  in  search  of  dividends,  I  would  readily 
admit.  But  that  it  should  find  its  profit  in  the  business 
of  improving  the  standard  of  existence  and  appealing  to 
the  pride  of  the  folk  was  to  me  a  wondrous  sign  of  the 
essential  vigor  of  American  civilization,  and  a  proof 

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that  public  spirit,  unostentatious  as  a  coral  insect,  must 
after  all  have  long  been  at  work  somewhere. 

Compare  the  East  Side  with  the  Bronx  fully,  and  one 
may  see,  perhaps  roughly,  a  symbol  of  what  is  going 
forward  in  America.  Nothing,  I  should  imagine,  could 
be  more  interesting  to  a  sociological  observer  than  that 
actual  creation  of  a  city  of  homes  as  I  saw  it  in  the  Bronx. 
I  saw  the  home  complete,  and  I  saw  the  home  incomplete, 
with  wall-papers  not  on,  with  the  roof  not  on.  Why,  I 
even  saw,  further  out,  the  ground  being  leveled  and  the 
solid  rock  drilled  where  now,  most  probably,  actual  homes 
are  inhabited  and  babies  have  been  born!  And  I  saw 
further  than  that.  Nailed  against  a  fine  and  ancient 
tree,  in  the  midst  of  a  desolate  waste,  I  saw  a  board  with 
these  words:  "A  new  Subway  station  will  be  erected 
on  this  corner."  There  are  legendary  people  who  have 
eyes  to  see  the  grass  growing.  I  have  seen  New  York 
growing.  It  was  a  hopeful  sight,  too. 

« 

At  this  point  my  impressions  of  America  come  to  an 
end,  for  the  present.  Were  I  to  assert,  in  the  phrase 
conventionally  proper  to  such  an  occasion,  that  no  one 
can  be  more  sensible  than  myself  of  the  manifold 
defects,  omissions,  inexactitudes,  gross  errors,  and  gen 
eral  lack  of  perspective  which  my  narrative  exhibits,  I 
should  assert  the  thing  which  is  not.  I  have  not  the 
slightest  doubt  that  a  considerable  number  of  persons 
are  more  sensible  than  myself  of  my  shortcomings;  for 
on  the  subject  of  America  I  do  not  even  know  enough 
to  be  fully  aware  of  my  own  ignorance.  Still,  I  am 
fairly  sensible  of  the  enormous  imperfection  and  rashness 

191 


YOUR   UNITED    STATES 

of  this  book.  When  I  regard  the  map  and  see  the 
trifling  extent  of  the  ground  that  I  covered — a  scrap 
tucked  away  in  the  northeast  corner  of  the  vast  multi 
colored  territory — I  marvel  at  the  assurance  I  displayed 
in  choosing  my  title.  Indeed,  I  have  yet  to  see  your 
United  States.  Any  Englishman  visiting  the  country 
for  the  second  time,  having  begun  with  New  York, 
ought  to  go  round  the  world  and  enter  by  San  Francisco, 
seeing  Seattle  before  Baltimore  and  Denver  before 
Chicago.  His  perspective  might  thus  be  corrected  in  a 
natural  manner,  and  the  process  would  in  various  ways 
be  salutary.  It  is  a  nice  question  how  many  of  the 
opinions  formed  on  the  first  visit — and  especially  the 
most  convinced  and  positive  opinions — would  survive 
the  ordeal  of  the  second. 

As  for  these  brief  chapters,  I  hereby  announce  that  I 
am  not  prepared  ultimately  to  stand  by  any  single  view 
which  they  put  forward.  There  is  naught  in  them  which 
is  not  liable  to  be  recanted.  The  one  possible  justifica 
tion  of  them  is  that  they  offer  to  the  reader  the  one 
thing  that,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  a  mature  and 
accustomed  observer  could  not  offer — namely,  an  im 
mediate  account  (as  accurate  as  I  could  make  it)  of  the 
first  tremendous  impact  of  the  United  States  on  a  mind 
receptive  and  unprejudiced.  The  greatest  social  his 
torian,  the  most  conscientious  writer,  could  not  recapture 
the  sensations  of  that  first  impact  after  further  inter 
course  had  scattered  them. 

THE    END 


